ad Street, Atlanta, Ga. 





Published Quarterly | by the Byrd Printing €o., 8 S. Bro af 
YRD PRINTING CO. PUBLISHERS. : . 
SEARCH-LIGHT LIBRARY: 


| 
re Bu. DeLEON, Epitc EDITOR. 








NOTICE: Return or renew all Library Materials! The Minimum Fee for 
each Lost Book is $50.00. 


The person charging this material is responsible for 
its return to the library from which it was withdrawn 
on or before the Latest Date stamped below. 


Theft, mutilation, and underlining of books are reasons for discipli- 
nary action and may result in dismissal from the University. 
To renew call Telephone Center, 333-8400 


UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN 





L161—O-1096 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2021 with funding from 
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 


https://archive.org/details/josephwheelermanOOdele 








/ 
In his ‘‘ Working Clothes,’’ at Montauk, 


COPYRIGHTED, 1899, 
BY 
ce Cae eee ONE 
All Rights Reserved. 


JOoserpH WHEELER, 


THE MAN, 
Tile Save SIMIAN 
THE SOLDIER, 


SEEN IN SEMI-BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 


By sls) Gr EON: 


AUTHOR OF ‘‘FOUR YEARS IN REBEL CAPITALS,”’ ‘‘CRAG NEST; THE 
ROMANCE OF SHERIDAN’S RIDE,”’ “ JOHN IIOLDEN, UNIONIST,”’ 
‘““THE PURITAN’S DAUGHTER,’’ ETC., ETC. 


Comrade, thy hand! The more thy tale I scan, 
The more it gives assurance of a Man. 
| CAROLABROR. 


ATLANTA, GA. 
BYRD PRINTING C@., 


1899 


INDEX TO CHAPTERS. 


BULTHOR SiPREEBACK ach, i221. guurah te he Cee 
TBH DICA TION. 4 ¥ trois sspicteles cles bata st; igh e enn Ce 
I.—THE MAN AS HE Is: In the public eye—Personal 
traits—Popularity with all parties—Anecdotes of 
loyalty to him—Religious tendency—-True modesty, 


Il.—EARLIER Days: Childhood and youth—Self-educa- 
tion—A young ‘‘hustler’’—Soldier instinct—West 
Point—Lee’s example? Coming South—Compari- 
son with others—A ‘‘chum’s’’ estimate—Mercantile 
Testes. Poa a than» oe eg ite vols ee 

II].—WHEELER IN WAR: Compared with Stuart and 
Jackson—Country, not self—Open record—A Massa- 
chusetts offer—Keen insight — Selflessness — Presi- 
dent Dayis’‘estimate—Poeim.. cn a). ae eee 

IV.—AS THE PUBLICIST: Loyalty to his State—Popularity 
—Never ‘‘hidebound’’—McKinley’s confidence— 
Its justification—Montank (eye ee oe 


V.—THE WHEELER FAMILY: English and Revolution- 
ary blood—Early trials—Coincidence—First love— 
An ideal home—Family register—The lost Boy— 
“S Solaceé?/<( poem nt sa ee fae pe eee 
VI.—THE ‘‘ARMY ANGEL?’: The title won—A mission 
revealed—MISs WHEELER’S STORY TOLD BY HER- 
SELF—A mother’s teaching—Trials—‘‘ The only im- 


mune at Santiago’ — ‘‘A precious experience’’— 
Honor, fromimen and* womens, 27.064.) eee 
VII.—IN ‘‘ RECONSTRUCTION’’ Days: Glance at the time— 


Had Lincoln lived—Illogical error—A young leader 
—Honest republicans—Pooh Bahs of the day—First 

‘Solid South’”’—Results of Reconstruction.. 
VIII.—** WHEELER’S LEAP’’ AT DucK RIVER: Dane 
fight against odds—He saves Bragg and rescues 
orrest— Dr. Wyeth’s: story Of ity, a.) hee 
IX.—THE RIDE ROUND ROSECRANS: Great raid of 1863— 
Its p.actical results—Wheeler’s report grins: 
with Gen. Thomas’. ir acer hgh acetire "oleae 


20 


31 


43 


56 


fa 


gli 


109 


115 


PAGE 
X.—His RECORD IN CoNGRESS: A working member— 
Useful and impartial-—Always a democrat—Great 

bills introduced and carried—As a speaker....... 124 
XI.—LATER Days: Popularity—Loyalty to him—Wheel +r 
and Sheridan—A ‘‘clean’’ politician—Religious 

Pits Generosity in cede abt ee eo ete Pine 130 
XII.—SANTIAGO TO MONTAUK : New major-general’s prompt 
action—At Tampa—On Cuban Soil—W heeler in the 
Van—His “‘plan” upsets Shafter’s—Vindicated by 
orders—Guasimas—At San Juan—No retreat! Sus- 
tained by department — At Montauk — Back in 

Meter ating. bette Pee rl hed acasce ste es ee ray se 139 
XIII.—THE MAN Topay: Measured—Mr. Bailey’s Crusade— 
Reed as the ‘‘Lion Heart’’—Wheeler’s course—En- 
dorsed by the country—Gabble—A _ daughter’s 

GUE) SEO a oes Pena Me 90s Re ie eS ANE 150 
XIV.—WHEELER’S GREATEST ViCtoRy : Old friends, new 
foes—Mr. Bailey’s bee-gum—Reed honey makes vin- 
egar— Whose “finger?-—Wheleer’s public statement 

—Congress sings and cheers—Dewey and Wheeler.. 155 





ILLUSTRATIONS. 


RRP V1 T1Gt Ce, Fass oe rie es Bas Teil eee hs ae Bes Cover. 
General Wheeler in his ‘‘ Working Clothes’’................ I 
Pe LORS LV) WiCCLOT EM i ieee Sa ee owe cols wien s a oh 8 
Soeermeiteclemateiss Veare Of AVC iy 1a... tcc eee s ns oo ee 17 
Pascoe ere ttenani ac VV Sst Olt. .(is ois os series ue bin 27 
uecontederate: _ientenant-General.. oy 3). ch es et ee a7 
Wheeler in the House of Representatives................... 47 
eee er Fass (sTOUPs) ccs Sew Zeige 6 oh ee aeons 57 
Naval Cadet Thomas Harrison Wheeler.................... 67 
eb e Army TES I aE he de leceree UOT ee oa 77 
Beets Alleghany” :C NO. 37 eo 2 <.s ales one Boer a ee 87 
Beemer ayy eeler. US. Vie. aye snes. ood eels We 97 
Mileetean at Duck River ..:.... 6.2.2: .scsceeem PEN 107 
NICSE CTC LIOMCSCCAC A. 205.5 on nics pod ney rw ed ee ee ee i iy 
peepee ing stat in: Cubads).)).. «cin oes eed «ane Oe belle loa 
Mrs. General Grant Welcomes General Wheeler....,..47... 137 
eeipor the Old Block”? 0) vi5s cas cy. ae ee 147 


Wueelet on Leace jubilee Parade;. ».......2...:; 8) ees 157 


AUTHOR'S FREEACE; 





HIS book does not purport to be a ‘‘ biography ’’ of General 
Wheeler. 

Far less does it aspire to be a ‘‘history’’ of the great 
events, over which he rose to noted leadership in the Lost 
Cause ; or of those later ones he surmounted to become, in time 
of profound peace, a leader of the reunited Nation. 

Least of all does it attempt to settle the still mooted details 
of that hot—if brief—campaign in Cuba, still before the eyes of 
our people in almost actuality. 

Biographies of living men are ever tinctured with prejudice, 
for or against their subjects. Too frequently they descend into 
mere laudation, or detraction; rarely do they weigh the good 
and the bdd in all mortals, with those nicest balanced scales, 
which alone hold ‘‘the truth of history.’’ 

History itself can only emerge from close and analytical 
study of facts that have grown cold. When I essaved the story 
of the Confederacy, in ‘‘Four Years in Rebel Capitals’’— 
twenty-five years after its collapse—I found the facts still too 
hot for judicious handling, and confined that book’s scope to 
sketches of episodes. As said in its preface, it was both too 
early and too late for ‘‘ history.”’ 

The heat of passion and of sympathy forbid the temperate 
handling of events by men of their hour. Rarely indeed has 
any universally accepted historical paper been written by a 
participant in the events of which it treats, or by one directly 
affected by their results. 

History must. be ‘‘ Philosophy teaching by example ;’’ but, 
to re.ch her highest values, it must be the example of others. 

(€. 


AUTHOR’S PREFACE. 7 


Time, research, analysis, rare power of statement and—above 
all—unswerving sense of justice, are demanded of him who 
aspires to write history. He must retire self and most of the 
human emotions and replace them by judgment alone. 

Feeling all this truth—yet feeling that some things had been 
left unsaid of the typical American of today—I wrote this brief 
sketch—‘‘another book about Joe Wheeler!’’ It strives to 
show him rather as (he man than as the hero. It uses my own 
long memory of him, to temper the memories and the experi- 
ences of others. 

If it bring him the least bit closer to the vast national 
population, on whose every tongue his name is today ; if it can 
make ‘‘the little hero’’ walk among them, without yellow sash 
or stainless sabre, denuded of the glamor of victory and re- 
moved from the blare of Fame’s trumpet ; if, attempting this, 
I make one more true man love him more—then this booklet 
has done its whole duty and has well repaid all the care and 
labor it cost. 

DAC CDE J[EON, 

Atlanta, Ga., March 15th, 1899, 





TO 


THE TRUE DAUGHTER 


OF A TRUE SIRE, WHO LEFT HER HOME 
OF EASE TO FACE DANGERS, FOR DUTY’S SAKE, 
THIS MEMOIR OF HER FATHER 
IS DEDICATED, 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


I.—THE Man As Hg Is. 


; HEN some great action, or a succession 

W of them, concenters the public gaze upon 

any man, we Americans are wont to look 

at him through one lens. So we get a profile view 

of him, or at best a flat picture, in place of the 
rounded actuality of the stereoscope. 

Of late the public eye has been very full of Gen- 
eral Joseph Wheeler. First it was riveted upon the 
modest, reticent and self-contained little lieutenant, 
who gave up his life-dream of service in his chosen 
cavalry arm, for what he believed to be simple 
duty, but what his own stainless sword carved into 
a fame that alone had made his name immortal. 
Next, a people began to look curiously at a new 
light in legislation and statesmanship; until it 
shone with a clear and steady light that held them, 
and—reflected back upon a score of years of arduous 
service—yet showed not one smirch uponit. Later 
still, one name resounded clear above the crack of 
Mauser guns, the victorious roar of answering 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


American cannon and the wild acclaim of Ameri- 
can victory, until the national gaze concentrated 
upon one man as the pivotal soldier of that war— 
and still so holds him. 

Latest of all, those eyes of a whole people grew 
misty, from universal public sympathy, as he sat 
at his duty, under the shadow of a sorrow unspeak- 
able. That great public heart, which was full of 
the pride in his public achievement, now beats 
with tempered and tenderer throbs for the man 
himself—for his gallant young soldier son—for 
those noble and helpful daughters, who sit at his 
knees in the ashes of desolation. 

And still the man himself is but a name to the 
vast majority of his fellows, even while the soldier 
is their pride and exemplar. Yet this simple and 
modest Alabamian is a marked and picturesque 
personality, beyond all glamor of two-fold military 
glory, and far out of hearing of the echoing guns 
of 1871, or their re-echoes from San Juan hill. 

His are a nervous force, a quick intellectuality 
and a restless energy—and chiefest an absolute 
honesty of purpose—that meet all obstacles of life 
with the vigorous certainty of their surmounting. 

Great soldier as he is—by instinct, education and 
experience—‘‘Joe”’ Wheeler is also the student, the 
educator, the man of affairs—lawyer, law-maker 
and successful politician. But few peer through 


10 


THE MAN AS HE IS. 


the lurid, if glorious, smoke of Cuban battle fields— 
through the time-thinned wreaths from those of fra- 
ternal strife—even to recall that he is the doyen of 
the national legislature; or to consider the causes 
that made him so. For, since the death of Mr. 
Holman, he is the oldest member of congress by 
continuous service, commencing with his first elec- 
tion in 1880. Technical enactment may have va- 
cated his seat, but the logic of justice—the voice 
of his own people, rising from their hearts as the 
vox det, reclaims him as their true and actual repre- 
sentative. 

Few, perhaps, of Joseph Wheeler’s warmest ad- 
mirers recall the steady and untiring, while quiet 
and unostentatious, activity of his long congres- 
sional life. Beginning in conscientious effort for 
betterment of his own people—and for justice to 
all the people—it has ever sought result and 
achieved it for his section, rather than popular ap- 
plause. Itis not of record that it ever sought per- 
sonal gain, or political advancement, but it has 
soucht ‘‘the greatest good of the greatest number;” 
and has brought ‘‘the working member” so close to 
his direct constituency—and to all the people of his 
state—that neither time, absence nor intrigue ~ 
could divorce them. 

General Wheeler, from instinct, military training 
and later experience in the Capital whirlpool, is a 


iT 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


keen and quick judge of human nature; a faculty 
to which may be traced much of his career’s suc- 
cess. He is as frank as he is fearless; outspoken, to 
the verge of bluntness, and never hesitant of speech 
for what he believes to be the right. The courage 
of his convictions is, in him, great enough to force 
respect for the convictions of others; but with it he 
combines a tenderness of heart, an ever-awake 
sympathy for others—which regards neither per- 
sonality or environment. 

The negroes about his district hold him much 
as they do ‘‘Marse Linkum.” They have a nebu- 
lous knowledge that the latter gave them their 
freedom; and they hold the patent and practical 
one that Wheeler helps them to something to feed 
its frequently recurrent hunger, They are, of 
course, his political opponents in most cases; but 
they come to him with their grievances about pen- 
sions or aught else, as they never did to their 
‘“‘representatives” of reconstruction days. And they 
come with very different result; for—be a claim of 
any kind honest and just—Congressman Wheeler 
takes it up with the same impetuosity and persist- 
ence he was wont to carry to the old time charge 
in battle; and he is almost as sure to win on the lat- 
ter field as on the former. Populist opponents and 
even republican rivals have not failed to use his 
good offices; and anecdotes innumerable are current 


12 


THE MAN AS Hk IS. 


in the ‘‘old eighth district” of favors he has done 
all classes. 

A friend of the writer—and a staunch one of the 
general—was riding through the district during a 
campaign where Wheeler had vicious opposition. He 
stopped at the house of a former republican leader, 
who was this time all for Wheeler. ‘To sound him, 
the visitor began doubtful talk about the general’s 
chance of winning; even comparing him, to his dis- 
advantage, with his opponent. Then the rough host 
rose in his wrath, declaring that no man should talk 
in that way of ‘‘little Joe Wheeler,” under his roof. 

‘Why, man, you have said far worse things than 
that about him,” urged his tormentor. 

‘“Mebbe I hev, mebbe I hain’t,” retorted the 
somewhat crestfallen Wheelerite. ‘‘But, mark, I 
ain’t a-sayin’ of ’em now! Joe Wheeler got me 
my rights, through congris, w’en ther whole pack 
o’ my own stripe jest promised an’ lied! See this!” 

He pulled from the pocket of his brown shirt a 
thumbed and worn letter; holding it before the 
eyes of his visitor as he added, in a tone between 
awe and surprise: 

‘An’ henged ef he hain’t writ it with his own 
han’; and he got me my money, too!” 

The other, to test him still further, suggested he 
would like to borrow the letter; but the late repub- 
lican roared: | 


13 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


‘‘Borry ¢hat/ Borry the letter Jo writ ter me/ Wy, 
man! Id liefer len’ yer my marridge certif’kit!” 

One Sunday, in later time, an old and well-known 
negro—who may be called Zeke here—appeared on 
the depot platform of his village in array to sug- 
gest “Solomon inallhisglory.” Ever before known 
as the slouchiest and most unneat of darkies, Zeke 
now sported ‘‘biled” linen, the long black frock 
that is acmé of dingy ambition, and a slick silk 
hat. The crowd of worse dressed negroes eyed 
him with equal envy and pride, from afar off, as he 
strutted the platform. Presently a white acquaint- 
ance recognized the old bird under his new plumage, 
and cried: 

‘Hello, Zeke! where did you get those fine 
clothes ?” 

‘‘War I’se got ’um?” the old black answered, with 
the indirectness of hisrace. ‘‘War yo’ think I’se 
got ’um, boss? Wy, l’se got’um from Marse Jinral 
Jo Weeler! All dem reppublikin memmers of con- 
gris dun promis Zeke, all dese year, ter git his pen- 
shun, and den day git him nothin’, Den, wen I’se 
gone an’ ingrashiated dat penshun wid Marse Jinral 
Jo Weeler, de money fur hit jus’ came right ‘long 
inno time. Dem’s talkin’, dey is; but da wite man 
wuk, fedo! Da’s were dese close cum frum, boss; 
an’ Gawd bress Jinral Jo, fur he’s de one help de 
po’ nigger!” 


14 


THE MAN AS HE IS. 


Endless such incidents show the reasons for the 
love and loyalty that surround Joseph Wheeler, the 
man, in his home district. ‘They show his earnest- 
ness, his industry and his loyalty to the trust in his 
hands; that no man who has a wrong to right, or 
any claim upon his public service, finds his back 
turned upon him, be that applicant black, white or 
piebald; be he friend or political opponent. 

Nor is his usefulness confined to his own district, 
or even to his own state. Members from other 
states ask the aid of his influence, of his foresight, 
judgment and rare knowledge of statistics, in push- 
ing local measures of their own; and they never 
ask in vain, and almost always to their profit. 

Added to this knowledge of the public man, is 
that of his beautiful and blameless domestic life. 
At this, no political rivalry, pique or disappoint- 
ment has ever cast one slur. The beautiful sim- 
plicity of perfect love and perfect sympathy that 
binds that home circle has gleaned forth and glo- 
rified it abroad. Its head is revered and idolized 
by all the rest, while his own life shows respect 
and love and tenderness for each of them, equal to 
their own. 

Such are the traits and methods that have placed 
this simple minded great man in the hearts of hiS 
constituents; and which hold him there ineradi- 
cably. Doubtless the glamor of his dashing war 


15 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


record was his stepping stone at the outset. If so, 
it is all the more to his credit that he has never 
traded upon that, even remotely. He seized new 
circumstances as they arose, and builded.a new— 
and wholly different—reputation by his use of 
them. , 

Even did limits of a brief sketch permit, detailed 
differentiation of his character-traits would scarce 
fitin here. They are left for the biographer ; only 
such salient ones as point the whole having been 
noted. . 

Of this man’s courage, endurance and truth there 
is no need to speak, They shine about his daily 
walk, making it bright and clean in the eyes of 
men. 

He isa reverent and religious man, too. Brought 
up in the Episcopal faith, he isa member of that 
church—not merely in form, but in fact. With 
nothing of cant, of hypocricy, or of ‘‘religion’s” 
too frequent acrimony about him, Joseph Wheeler 
still acts out his tenets; and lets his life, rather 
than his words, proclaim him the Christian gentle- 
man. In the hurry of the campaign, the quiet of 
his tent, the hot rush of the charge, or at the bier 
of his lost beloved ones, the old warrior looks to 
The Master for aid, for inspiration and tor comfort. 
In the worry, wear and annoyance of a close politi- 
cal campaign, he relies upon what he believes to be 


16 





From_an early Ambrotype. 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


At 15; when he entered as a private in the 
Grand Army of Workers. 





THE MAN AS HE IS. 


the justice and truth of his cause; never descend- 
ing to personality, but trusting to argument. It 
is not written in his long public record, military or 
civil, that he has wittingly done injustice to an op- 
ponent. . Neither is it known that he ever debased 
the hustings by the ‘‘catchy” vulgarity of the du- 
bious stories and jokes, too common to them; or 
that he has ever broken one pledge to his support- 
ers, thence made. 

Physically small, though wiry and enduring, he 
rises above mere stature in the eyes of those who 
hear him speak in the fervid eloquence of plain 
honesty. Mentally, he towers over the stalwart 
men about him, asa veritable son of Anak. 

Briefly to sum him up: Joseph Wheeler is that 
rare combination—a gentleman of the old school, 
grafted upon the progressive man of today—which 
makes him the typical American he is. That com- 
bination, to borrow of the playwright, is only writ- 
ten by the hand of the Omnipotent, signed man, and 
sealed gentleman. 


II.—EARLIER Days. 


If it be really true that ‘‘ the child is father to 
the man,” then that strange auto-parentage need 
have had little regret in sparing the rod during 
Joseph Wheeler’s youth. 

Spite of long and good descent, on both sides of 
his family, the subject of this sketch is practically 
a ‘self-made man.” This irony of circumstance is 
set forth elsewhere ; but result shows that he had 
cause to thank himself for the making, and Circum- 
stance for the opportunity. 

He was markedly an ‘‘old-man boy” in some re- 
gards. Not that his early youth was joyless, or 
free from the whims and sports—which make their 
happiness—of all boys. But, removed from home- 
ties at tender years—and early sent up against a 
strange and peculiarly hard world, on his own 
account, as a bread-winner—the serious side of life 
began to project light shadows across the full sun- 
shine of youth, earlier with him than with most 
boys—and especially most boys of southern birth. 

In achapter devoted to his family, some causes 
of this will be seen; as well as how the young na- 
tive Georgian found his way to the Military Acad- 
emy asa New Yorker. At West Point he was not 


20 


EARLIER DAYS. 


shown any special grace, or exemption from the cus- 
tomary hazing of ‘‘plebes.” Indeed his grave de- 
meanor and his smallsize made him a favorite target 
for the not always gentle ‘‘jokes and tricks” of ca- 
det life. But he bore these small slings and arrows 
of outrageous fortune with the calm of that innate 
philosophy which has shown so steadily through 
all his subsequent career. For—while it is not of 
record that Joseph Wheeler ever let an intentional 
affront pass unresented—it is notable that his 
naturally nervous temperament calms into the 
phlegmaatic under provocation. The strategic 
vein deep under his surface rashness that makes 
him adangerous opponent, makes him also a philoso- 
pher under the needle pricks of every day life. 

There is parallel in him to Napoleon. The na- 
tures of both men show nervous quickness and 
prompt grasp. At Brienne, too, the youthful Cor- 
sican foreshadowed his meteor career; the soldier 
instinct born with him dominating his juvenile 
days and early studies. And at West Point, Wheeler 
was not regarded as a peculiarly bright student, in 
some lines of the course. He was introspective, 
and his bent was for tactics. 

This showed in earlychildhood. The born soldier 
and leader cropped out through all his boyish sports; 
and the ‘‘mud-pie” and ‘‘sand-foot” of the ordi- 
nary urchin became with him the trench, the coun- 


21 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


terscarp and the redoubt. It was his early delight 
to marshal and drill his little playmates; to 
dominate and lead them—though ever with the 
kindly severity he showed afterwards to his men 
in the army, and to his ‘‘boys” in Wheeler’s 
Cavalry. 

Care and precept alike failed to divert the boy 
from this inborn mastery. Argument, promises 
and threats of dire future disaster availed nothing 
to change his fixed intent to get into the United 
States army, by some means—vague and nebulous 
as were his ideas of what, where, or when those 
means might be. History was merely repeating 
herself in his case; for she shows us how most 
great generals of the middle and remote past 
evinced their natural trend, when mere toddlers. 
Indeed, from her examples it is deducible that infant 
Joshua gazed with indescribable longing at the sun, 
when ‘‘scrapping” with his smaller playmates; or 
that Cyrus never went to the zoo without strange 
longing to ride the baby elephant. 

But in Joseph Wheeler’s case, the history is in 
plain sight and vouched for by men still living; 
one of them being the friendly ex-congressman, 
with coincidental name, to whose kindliness and 
perspicacity in sending him to the Point the two 
latest wars of this country are indebted for one of 
their greatest soldiers. 


22 


EFARLIER DAYS. 


Cadet Wheeler entered the Academy in July, 1854; 
about the time of changing its course to the five 
year term. He early became corporal and rose toa 
class-company lieutenancy; and early and late he 
imbibed thirstily all the military side of the instruc- 
tion, and was an omnivorous student, not only of 
practical military science, but also of every book on 
war that he could lay his hands upon. Withal he 
was a docile, obedient and punctilious pupil; rarely 
deserving a demerit, and equally patient and cour- 
teous with professors and classmates. 

There is astrong streak of philosophy in this 
same great soldier; and, parallel with it there runs 
all through his nature a broader streak of brave 
humility and charity and forbearance, which may 
be named, and notirreverently, the Christianity of 
human nature. At that time, too, Robert E. Lee— 
then captain of engineers—was superintendent of 
the Academy; and some of General Wheeler’s friends 
pretend to trace a vast deal of the best in him tothe 
example of that great soldier and noble gentleman. 
But in very fact, the Lee of that day had not shown 
the full fruition of the goodness in him, any more 
than he had of the greatness. Moreover, none who 
know the real relation of cadet and commandant 
will assert that they were close enough together, 
nor often enough, for great absorption of personal 
example by one from the other. 


23 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


This will incline the thinker to believe that the 
better traits shown by the cadet were not refractive, 
but merely early buds of the real, and then unde- 
veloped, Wheeler. 

It chanced that some old playmates and chums of 
the writer were at the Academy at this time, ora 
little later; and from them he heard much of ‘‘Point 
Wheeler.” Ignorance of class nomenclature caused 
the idea that this was because he was at West 
Point; and only on meeting them all later was it 
explained to be because his classmates averred he 
was ‘‘so little that he had neither length, breadth, 
nor thickness.” 

Many men who later rose to great fame in war 
‘were at the academy during Cadet Wheeler’s term. 
One of these—though only for a year—was another 
native Georgian and born cavalry leader, who rose 
to corps command in the third year of ‘‘the brothers’ 
war”’—Pierce M. B. Young. Another, who became 
a noted cavalry general on the Union side, was 
General Wilson, the rzider; and still another Wil- 
son, General John M., now chief of engineers, was 
his friend, though in the class below. Two gallant 
ex-Confeds, alluded to as the author’s friends, and 
the ones who first introduced him to the future 
lieutenant-general, were Colonel Wade Hampton 
Gibbes, of South Carolina, and Major Frank Huger, 
of the same state. 


24 


HARLIER DAYS. 


General Merritt, General A. C. M. Penning'ton, 
now commanding the Department of the Gulf, and 
many others, were at the Point at the same time; 
but none of his own class reached in any way the 
later fame of reticent and mild-mannered ‘‘Point” 
Wheeler. 

He graduated—nineteenth in his class—July 1st, 
1859, and was at once attached, as brevet second 
lieutenant, to the First Dragoons, the famous regi- 
ment which, two years later, furnished so many lead- 
ers of highest rank and deathless fame to both 
armies in the civil war. 

Joseph Wheeler’s brief record in the United States 
army—at that time—reads thus: brevet second lieu- 
tenant First Dragoons, 1st July, 1859; transferred 
to Mounted Rifles, 21st June, 1860; second lieu- 
tenant Ist September, 1860; resigned, April 22, 
1861. 

Then the echoes of that first gun from Sumter 
had shaken the army to its center; men of all its 
grades were restless, uncertain and hesitant. It 
was not yet sure that there was to be real war, and 
some officers had not fully decided as to where they 
would fight, did that come. Not one of these was 
Joseph Wheeler, for to his nature decision means 
action. With a great wrench he tore himself from 
his loved career, resigned his cherished commis- 
sion, turned his face southward, and tendered his 


25 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


yet untried sword to the nascent government at 
Montgomery. 

The reader will recall that he was then a junior 
second lieutenant. Four years later—when only 
twenty-eight—he sheathed the stainless sword of a 
lieutenant-general ! 

The writer recalls vividly, across the long vista 
of busy years, his first meeting with the popular 
idol of to-day; the man of whom the long time un- 
compromising New York 77zdune lately said: 

‘‘No place where the flag flies is too good for 
‘Joe Wheeler’; and where he goes, his old com- 
rades in arms must likewise go!” 

He was a fresh young ‘‘Guinea pig” lieutenant, 
but a year from the Academy; and was then, in 
the summer of 1860, visiting Washington to try 
and transfer to the Rifles. The unwritten facts of 
this transfer from the Second Dragoons tell more 
of the man and his methods than a volume of 
praiseful type could do. 

The Wheeler then met at the capital was a 
mild, reticent youth; nowise self-assertive, though 
quietly self-contained in port and speech; and with 
that reserve fund of indomitable will that has 
since carried him to victory over all obstacles. An 
early playmate—Gibbes, above mentioned—and a 
West Point chum of Wheeler’s, was the writer’s 
guest in Washington. He introduced us and told 


26 





JOSEPH WHEELER. 
AS A LIEUTENANT, AT WEST POINT, 1858. 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


of the young dragoon’s longings. Later he added 
that the chances for their fulfilment were slim, as 
Wheeler could bring no direct influence to bear 
upon the War Department. But while others were 
discussing the doubts, the subject of them marched 
up to the Adjutant General’s office, bluntly stated 
his case to Colonel Sam Cooper; and came back, 
just as quietly as he went, with the transfer order 
in his pocket. That is Wheeler’s way, whether 
acting for himself, or for a friend. 

Excepting a few gashes from Time’s saber, and 
that now famous gray beard, the cadet of that day 
was very much the same man as the hero of this 
one. Small, agile and wiry, he was a natural 
drill-master and a born horseman. He was a noted 
‘gallery favorite” with riding-school visitors; and 
for better reasons an equal one with his class- 
mates. To them, through all lapse of time and 
glamor of fame, he is ‘‘Point Wheeler” still. Very 
recently, a letter from one of them, not meant for 
type, says! 

**T recall Point Wheeler very clearly, as he 
was in those days. He was always earnest and 
quiet, and rarely spoke when he had nothing to 
say. He was a voracious reader of everything 
about war, which he could lay hands on. He was 
small in every measurement, but he was a natural- 
born soldier and a true gentleman always.”’ 


29 


EHARLIER DAYS. 


It is needless to revert to his brilliant and fa- 
miliar record, during the civil war. Everybody 
has, at last, read how he carved his own way 
from a company to a corps commander. ‘The re- 
turn of peace located him in New Orleans. ‘There 
he changed his sword into a book-keeper’s pen, his 
‘‘pigskin” for a ledger ; and became a commission 
merchant, in 1866. Doubtless the life was uncon- 
genial to his active and aggressive temperament, ex- 
panded by the hot friction of war; but in days 
close post bellum, preference constantly gave the fas 
to necessity. So the young merchant wrought on 
in his new field; finding time to perfect himself in 
legal studies, for which he had strong natural bent 
and character fitness. But there was a more co- 
gent—if more tender—inspiration to effort. The 
young warrior had surrendered without terms—as 
will be told presently ; and the future—rosy as it 
seemed, and scented all with orange blossoms— 
must be looked to. | 

Meanwhile, he was tendered the position of com- 
mandant and professor of sciences, in the then 
University of Louisiana; but the compliment, while 
tempting, was declined. ‘The young and ambitious 
fighter was ready for war on circumstance. He 
plainly had his eyes fixed on a future higher than 
the pedagogue’s couid ever beeome. ‘Towards this 
he made his first move in 1868; gave up his New 


30 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


Orleans business and moved to Wheeler, an Ala- 
bama town named for him, and began the practice 
of law. ‘There he prospered rapidly, and made 
friends of ‘‘ all sorts and conditions of men.” 


II].—WHEELER IN WaR. 


It is no part of the scheme of this brief book to 
describe battles and sieges; to follow its subject in 
his brilliant charges and daring raids; or to discuss 
his acumen and strategic force, as compared with 
those of contemporary leaders. All these matters 
have already been discussed by historians, and com- 
pared by pens far abler than this, guided by hands 
of men familiar with each scene described. 

And yet, mooted points of judgment—of minor de- 
tails, even—remain unsettled still. History, sketch 
and discussion of them will continue to be written, 
haply ‘‘to the crack of doom.” And still unsettled 
differentie may also remain of moot, even to that 
far off and unfixed period. But there are some 
points of the wars in which he took such active part 
—some scenes of the bloody-brilliant and swift- 
changing drama, in which his vo/e was so leading ~ 
—as to make them wholly personal to the man, and to 


81 


WHEELER IN WAR. 


throw broader and clearer light upon any consider- 
ation of his character. 

Notable among these was his ‘‘Ride around 
Rosecrans”—detailed later; andit has always struck 
the writer as equally curious as unjust that it has 
been so little celebrated in story, song and picture. 
For boldness and dash, combined with incisive 
strategy and tremendous result, it would be hard to 
find one in the whole civil war that even approach- 
ed it. And that raid alone would have proved 
Wheeler a great soldier, had his keen and ever- 
ready sabre been sheathed forever after it. | 

Stuart’s ‘‘Pamunkey Raid’—round the rear of 
McClellan’s army as it lay before Richmond, to the 
White House on that river—has been the theme of 
at least one great painting, scores of essays, ro- 
manices and songs, and of one poem that will liveso 
long as Confederate memory exists. Indeed, John 
R. Thompson’s ‘‘Burial of Latane” will be read by 
many who have forgotten that war’s causes, no less 
than it details; even as we read to-day the swirl of 
Sydney’s charge and the legendary verse of Sir 
Launcelot and ‘‘Roderick,the Gay.” Yetthat poem 
and William D. Washington’s fine painting, alike 
commemorate the one casualty that saddened the 
brilliant and daring foray of the Virginian cavalier. 

With no intent to touch one single leaf of the 
evergreen laurels that crown Jeb Stuart’s fame, no 


32 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


student of the time can compare zs great raid with 
the desperate, destructive and resultful one of 
Wheeler’s handful around the wily old fighter in 
the blue; and that in the face of fearful odds and 
with every chance against him. For movements of 
its knights upon war’s great chess-board must ever 
be measured by their effect upon the closing of the 
great game; and it is almost simple to prove that 
this bold maneuver saved checkmate to Bragg— 
when its own check had been fatal. 

Stuart’s move was a brilliant, well conceived and 
useful one; but it was more a reconnoissance-in- 
force, for information; and it neither crippled the 
enemy, nor affected his commander’s ‘‘gambit,” in 
measurable proportion to Wheeler’s. Yet, the two 
showed acertain similarity in the fighting quali- 
ties of the two great cavalry chiefs. Both possessed 
audacity, coolness and dauntless determination to 
achieve the result aimed at; both had that gift— 
so rare as to be purely God-given—of making men 
follow to the death, with but the one thought of 
going after their leader. Both met odds with high 
disdain, that was almost ever sure presage of vic- 
tory ; and both had the absolute confidence of their 
commanders—who told them where, but never how, 
to go. 

‘But there the character-parallel diverges; for 
Stuart was ‘‘ever gay,” laughing amid peril and 


33 


WHEELER IN WAR. 


soothing reverse when it came rarely, by the seduc- 
tive tinkle of his banjo-player’s art. Wheeler 
was ever cognizant of the gravity of the result he 
must achieve; weighing the chances as calmly— 
making his resolve, or changing his plan as quickly, 
at need, under the crushing charge of overwhelm- 
ing numbers, as he did in the quiet of his tent, or 
the hot discussion of the council. ‘This trait has 
kept young with him, through all these years: it 
was as fresh at Santiago, as when he wheeled his 
horse and led his ‘‘corporal’s guard” to hold his 
pursuers, and save Forrest, at Duck river—when 
only-his wonderful leap into its bullet-churned cur- 
rent saved himself. 

In this side of his character, the little general 
more resembles Stonewall Jackson; if less intro- 
spective and reticent than the grand Puritan of the 
war. Less saturnine and meditative than Jackson, 
he also resembled him in unsparing use of his men, 
when need called for pushing them beyond endur- 
atice, with seeming cruelty of spur. If Jackson’s 
‘foot cavalry ” fell by the way in those meteor-like 
marches in the Valley, he let them lie and rushed 
to victory with the rest. When Wheeler’s worn 
men and starving horses were reported to him unfit 
to go further, he left the very worst of them and 
somehow got there with the rest. These points of 
similarity will be shown later by example; and, 


34 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


for another, Wheeler was ever a true Christian, a 
prayerful man—trusting in God and nightly com- 
muning with Him, under the stars of the camp, or 
roof of a friend—in imminent peril and through 
victory’s flush alike. Nor was even Jackson more 
loved by the men he used—when needs he must— 
like automatons, or mere driven cattle. 

All know the story upon which James R. Ran- 
dall based his great and tender poem, ‘‘’The Lone 
Sentry.” It was reported to Jackson that the men 
—pushed past human endurance—had fallen in 
their tracks as they reached camp, and were abso- 
lutely unfit for guard duty. Reliant and tender, 
if iron under pressure, the great soul of the Napo- 
leon of the Valley spoke. ‘‘I will guard the camp!” 
he said; and while he watched, his giants ‘‘slept 
and were refreshed.” 

A similar incident of self-abnegation—and that 
in the face of absolute certainty of a great and 
echo-making victory—is known of Wheeler. Who 
wrote the version of it given here, the writer of the 
final sketches of this volume does not know; but it 
is copied from the worn scrap-book of an old South- 
ern lady; and it is ‘‘ Wheeler all over” to those who 
know him. It was when Hood sent his cavalry to 
harry Sherman’s flanks and deter his march by 
every possible destruction and obstacle he could: 
-4 **On this raid, when at Sparta, Tenn., his com- 


85 


WHEELER IN WAR. 


mand was anxious to move on to Nashville. The 
important question with all was: ‘Will General 
Wheeler take Nashville?’ None asked: Can he take 
it? His force being several times that of the enemy, 
success was sure. One of his generals called to see 
him and inquired if he intended taking Nashville. 

‘“‘“Why, general?’ was the calm reply. 

“To be candid with you, general,’ replied the 
officer, ‘the press of the South has so vituperated 
you that everybody has lost confidence in you ex- 
cept your own command and those of the army who 
have had an opportunity of knowing what you have 
done. Your own reputation and that of your com- 
mand demand that you should take Nashville; you 
know you can easily do it.’ 

‘* “Yes,’ replied General Wheeler, ‘I am confident 
of success if I undertake it, but what good to our 
cause would be accomplished? None. General 
Hood sent me here to do what harm I could to Gen- 
eral Sherman; this would not injure him; no harm 
can be done him except by destroying railroads; we 
have no time to waste on outside matters.’ 

“¢ “Yes, general, but your reputation demands this 
of you. You have been a commanding officer for 
nearly four years, and have never yet struck a blow 
for yourse/f ; always doing what you thought for 
the good of the country. Everybody else works for 
themselves some, and why not you? If you would 


36 





LIEUTENANT-GENERAI WHEELER. 


Expressly reproduced and enlarged from a war-time “ carte-de-visite,”’ 
taken 121 1864. 


a 
were 


- 
a) 





JOSEPH WHEELER. 


take Nashville you would be pronounced the great- 
est cavalry leader of the war—if you do not, with 
all the press of the country against you—I do not 
know how you can sustain yourself. You can take 
Nashville and not lose more than one hundred men. 
You ought to do it.’ 

**In his calm, quiet and dignified, yet modest, 
manner, General Wheeler replied: ‘General, my 
troops were not given me to make a name, but to do 
what I could for my country. Icare not for the loss 
of my position. While I am ready this minute to 
sacrifice myself and all of my command to accom- 
plish a corresponding good for my country, there is 
not a man in my command I would have wounded 
to make me the greatest general in the world.’ 

‘Twas the knowledge of the proper valuation of 
human life by General Wheeler, who, they well 
knew, would only send them where he led and where 
duty called, that made his men such devoted follow- 
ers ; and all men are compelled to admire such noble 
traits of character.” 

This simply-told story of the old lady’s scrap-book 
needs no moral pointed. It smacks much of Stone- 
wall Jackson, something of Havelock, and no little 
of Sir Galahad—‘‘ because his heart is pure!” 

President Davis was not acourtier. Unlike Tal- 
leyrand he never spoke for the sake of hearing him- 
self think; far less would he have sent down to 


39 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


posterity, a dictum unmeant, or hastily considered. 
At no period of his career was the Confederate 
Chief ever addicted to compliments, merely for 
compliment’s sake; yet he pays General Wheeler a 
tribute that will last as graven stone. Summing 
up his value and results, in his ‘‘Rise and Fall of 
the Confederacy,” Mr. Davis said: 

‘With his small force Wheeler daringly and per- 
sistently harrassed and, when practicable, delayed 
the enemy’s advance, attacking and defeating ex- 
posed detachments, deterring its foragers from 
venturing far from the main body and defending 
all cities and towns along the railroad lines.. His 
operations display a dash, activity, vigilance and 
consummate skill which justly entitle him to a per- 
manent place on the roll of great cavalry leaders.” 

Such, in necessarily brief and crude form, isa 
glimpse of the man in his native element—war. It 
needs no detail to prove him the born-leader— 
vigorous, alert, magnetic and tactful. It shows 
him equally the humanitarian, even in the most in- 
human—if most necessary—of the world’s sciences. 

What he did at Santiago—why he was moved to 
doit, atan age when men still in uniform seek retire- 
ment and rest—is all too freshin the popular mind 
to need iteration just here. Some of it—necessary 
perhaps to correct understanding of his character 
and its outcome in action—will be noted later, in 


40 


WHEELER IN WAR. 


the closing chapters. Suffice it here to note that 
the world accepts General Wheeler not only as the 
great fighter, but as the great soldier. 

Echoes from distant lands repeat the proud ac- 
claim that was his, when he stepped once more upon 
that native soil, for which he had twice battled so 
grandly—meek, undemonstrative, but  laurel- 
crowned—after the Cuban campaign. 

While the President placed in his hands a great 
and grave trust—and he sat down at Montauk to 
perform it, as simply and naturally as though an 
every-day citizen—men and women alike burst into 
the swelling chorus of his praises. One and all 
realized the truth that 


‘The bravest are the tenderest, 
The loving are the daring.’’ 


Even the prosaic writer of this epitome of the 
‘¢ War Child’s ” record wrote—because he could not 
help it: 

WHEELER. 





DEDICATED TO THE MUSE OF HISTORY. 





Pause, thou fair Muse, who wieldest fateful pen 
That writes to Time, for sorrow, or for ruth, 
The tale alike of great and little men— 
Pause at his name, whose highest meed is truth ! 
There Fame’s best guerdon tells in simplest speech 
Philosophy may by example teach. 


41 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


’Mid all the throng that may thy scroll illume— 
Crowded with patient brave whom duty led— 
Wheeler’s grand record lightens through the gloom, 
Foremost wher’er the bravest fought and bled ; 
And not the sabre stainless that he waved 
Was keener than what thought the council saved ! 


A warrior reared from young, impulsive days, 
By fostering hand—if mailed—of the State, 
That stainless blade for her was quick to raise, 
And carve a record clean as it was great. 
His the rare gift to bow to Fate’s decree 
And higher rise from deep adversity. 


For—sheathed that blade—the spirit keen within 
Flashed forth in bloodless battles for the right ; 
As statesman true, respected, quick he’d win 
All hearts of men in Honor’s endless fight, 
Where rent repute and battered name strew far 
Fields not less fatal of the wordy war. 


But when the time for talk to him seemed o’er, 
To answer foreign taunt and boasting vain, 
The good old hilt leapt to his grasp once more 
To strike for country and—avenge the Maine ! 
Then the late ‘‘Rebel’’ proved his patriot truth— 
His country’s calling quick renewed his youth. 


When the fierce fever, that struck down strong men 
The bullets spared, pressed hot on brow and lid, 
Soul more than body sprang to horse again 
And led to triumph—as once led The Cid ! 
And, when some wavered in the council grim, 
Rose the old voice—and Victory answered him ! 


42 


AS THE PUBLICIST. 


Muse of the deathless pen, thy record trace 
Today for Time, of one grand knight and true; 
Nor strive this shining lesson to erase : 
He links the old-time virtues to the new. 
Hail his return unscathed, whose fame must stand 
Example for one people with one land ! 


IV.—As THE PUBLICIST. 


Patriotism and nationalism are the foundations 
of Joseph Wheeler’s greatness, even as loyal truth 
is its keystone. 

It has been shown how the boy went to West 
Point from resistless desire to serve his country ; 
how the youth made that great wrench, which tore 
him away—as he believed forever—from his ideal 
career, only because he believed in duty to the soil 
that gave him birth. All men—of all parties—have 
learned to know that when Joseph Wheeler went 
into politics he was impelled by the character 
necessity within him to work and fight and suffer 
for his native land, armed with such weapons as he 
could best grasp for her defence from foes without 
her bounderies—or within. 

But, once enlisted—under the dome of the na- 
tional arsenal—in the army of peace, he was as 


48 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


true to instinct of right and honor, as he had been 
when battling for life and death with some col- 
leaguers, then his foes. 

When he surrendered his stainless blade and 
gave his parole, the war was over for Joseph 
Wheeler. He could not accept the condition of 
things that parodied justice and disgraced civiliza- 
tion in his adopted state during the era of so- 
called ‘‘ Reconstruction.” Fighter born, and honest 
by instinct, he could but fight fraud, imposed satrapy 
and machine-made laws. But he fought them in 
the open; not as some counseled, with the tactics 
of the bushwhacker. 

From the day he became an Alabamian, his brave, 
outspoken counsel won him admirers. His indomi- 
table courage of conviction, and his indubitable 
honesty of purpose and of speech, won him friends. 
And as these wrought with him and learned to know 
him better, they linked those friends to him with 
hooks of steel. 

Wheeler’s meteoric career in war is not more 
brilliant—and perhaps less remarkable—than his 
record as a publicist. In congress he is the same 
earnest, farseeing, indefatigable fighter; always 
alert, and almost always successful. 

In the long and bitter struggle of Alabama—pre- 
ceeding the victory of 1874, which shook off alien 
carpet-bag domination and seated Houston in the 


44 


AS THE PUBLICIST. 


governor’s chair—these traits shone as conspicu- 
ously and brilliantly in the young political leader, 
as had the bright sword that ever blazed in the 
front of battle—beckoning, not pointing to victory! 
And when—following the fitness of things—his 
friends and neighbors saw them to be the needed 
traits in the brilliant battle of peace, they sent him 
to congress a few years later, to repeat on the wider 
field the successes of the smaller; to fight their na- 
tional fight as he had that of his state. 

The old eighth district of Alabama is nobody: S 
fool.” In its own practical. way: ‘‘When it seesa 
good thing, it goes for it.” That good thing it 
saw in his representation of it; and he has been 
sent back—term after term, and over every ambi- 
tious desire and every political trickery used to dis- 
place him. Further on some details of his work 
will be pointed; but it is the result of his methods 
of work which are meant to be noted just here. 

His just bravery and his modest insistence for the 
right early won him the love of his party friends 
and the respect of his political opponents. ‘The 
manly courtesy and quick magnetism of his char- 
acter; his earnestness, that carries conviction with 
it; and his absolute lack of partisan, or sectional 
rancor—in days when fresh wounds were sore, and 
when heated blood had scarce found time to cool, 
under re-kindled provocation—soon changed” that 


45 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


respect into personal liking; often into warm and 
genuine friendship. For that other old soldier, in 
the play, was a better philosopher than swordsman 
when he said: 

‘‘Gad! one never knows how much he likes a 
fellow until he has fought him!” 

The men who fought Joseph Wheeler on the 
national battle-fields found him a wary, keen and 
skillful fighter—but never a wily one. He never 
struck until the opponent put up his hands, and he 
never took down his own while there was a ‘‘fight- 
ing chance” left for his taking. Rapidly he became 
a marked man on the floor; from the first he has 
been an invaluable one in the committee room. 
Until the spreading growth of his fame outran his 
inclination, he kept studiously out of the news- 
papers; believing that the work he had been sent 
to accomplish could be best done by conferetice and 
mutual concessions, and that the advertising poli- 
tician was equally liable to hurt himself as he was 
sure not to help his constituents. 

But the men about him who knew the Alabamian 
best—in congress, in the departments and in social 
life—became impressed with the fact that a ‘‘south- 
ern brigadier in congress” might not only be an 
aggressive and sturdy fighter for his section and 
her people, but a national man and a broad-gauge 
patriot at one and the same time. The eyes of 


46 








ow * 


» 





MAJOR-GENERAL JOSKPH WHEELER IN HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 


First row, in front ot and to the right of the Speaker. 





AS THE PUBLICIST. 


thinking leaders became fixed on the seemingly 
quiet little representative; and they often rolled 
uneasily in their sockets when they saw him set 
himself steadily to carry some unpopular measure 
through the house. Instances of how he did this 
more than once will be recorded elsewhere. 

But steadily Joseph Wheeler received advance- 
ment—through no seeking of his own—in public 
estimate; so that when he offered his sword, first of 
all, to the president in the then impending war, the 
country knew the man and applauded his accept- 
ance for the highest grade in army service. 

Mr. McKinley knew him, too, He had fought 
him in war and served with him on the floor of the 
house. He realized, perhaps more than any of his 
chosen friends and colleagues, that there was more 
stuff in the ex-Confederate than the every-day ma- 
jor general need be madeof. Plainly the president 
had ample confidence in his appointee; and that it 
was amply justified the hands and voices of the en- 
tire country reaffirm today. 

Wheeler’s selection for the trying and thankless 
command at Montauk was not meant for a compli- 
ment; nor yet wasit a matter of rank. ‘There were 
older and regular generals at leisure; and some of 
them ‘‘ pulling for it.” But the need was not only 
for a soldier, but also for one who was something 
more than a soldier. And this the president saw, 


49 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


when he voluntarily gave into General Wheeler’s 
hands a discretion so absolute as to make him 
practically commander-in-chief in his own depart- 
ment, free from intervention of the war depart- 
ment, 

It is plain that the president—both in his first 
appointment and later assignment—had looked be- 
neath the uniform and justly estimated the man. 
He saw that intellectual activity and physical vi- 
gor had, in General Wheeler’s case, made excep- 
tional resistance to time’s attack; that when the 
veteran left the seat that was his indefinitely, he 
had done so not from impulse but because of pa- 
triotism ~ and love for the whole country, then 
threatened. He saw that the Spanish war was as 
inevitable as the civil war had been; that while 
most of his colleagues were ‘‘crying ‘peace! peace!’ 
—there could be no peace.” He offered the tried 
old sword; the president accepted it and—when 
judgment keener and as true as that sword was 
needed—he placed its wielder in the most trying 
post the war had shown. ‘This is the sort of praise 
that speaks the loudest: it is the sort that will echo 
longest. 

But the impulsiveness and instinct of the old 
fighter moved through his veins in even course with 
the chivalrous gentleness of true knighthood. They 
first carried him to the fore-front of fire and 


50 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


carnage at San Juan. ‘They raised his voice loud 
and victorious, in the wavering council, against any 
retrograde from gained advantage, that would cost 
equal blood and risk to rewin. But the last halted 
the ambulance of the fevered commander, at the 
presence of suffering: and, when he took to the sad- 
dle again forced the wounded privates into his 
place. 

But there has been vaunt of none of this by the 
man himself, or by those nearest to him. The 
soldier, who left ease and honors for that front he 
knew so well from experience, left them for duty 
only. ‘That he has performed—as the true man 
ever does—with no fanfare of trumpets; and avoid- 
ing slightest friction with superior, inferior, or 
humbled enemy. Amid all the rush of ambitions 
and all clash of interests, this real soldier has stood 
as calm and unperturbed, as in the clash of sabres 
and the sing of shells. 

This is high praise? Unlike most praise, it is 
simple truth, unvarnished and unadorned. ‘The 
polish and the gilding for these bare facts will 
come in history. 

It is seen that Joseph Wheeler is, in no sense the 
typical politician. 

Clique and cabal have never known him; but, 
while a solid party man, he has shown his first and 
unswerving loyalty to his constituency, to the 


51 


AS THE PUBLICIST. 


‘advancement of the people of his entire section; 
and, most pronouncedly, to his country, 

His loyalty to her needs no underscoring. He 
has always shown belief that he was sent to con- 
gress to do the best that was in him; and he has 
ever done that, without asking instructions. The 
result is his rock-based popularity; his hold equally 
upon the confidence and the affection of all the peo- 
ple of ‘‘the old eighth.” ‘This stands proved by his 
automatic canvass, against the strongest opponents 
ever set up against him. 

Absorbed in military duties in Cuba, he made no 
appeals; writing but one letter, tosay he would go 
back to Congress, if elected—and if the war were 
over. ‘That settledit. Opposition, seeing no head 
to make, withdrew; and the exceptional spectacle 
was shown the country of a whole congressional 
district voting unanmously for one man, without 
regard to party, race, politics, or prejudice. It was 
the triumph of personality over politics—and the 
most sweeping one ever seen. 

Impulsive to the verge of rashness; quick to form 
Opinions and immovable in them; asking nothing 
as mere favor, but demanding every right to the 
full, he is still the popular idol of his home people, 
and the respected exemplar of southern representa- 
tion tohiscolleagues. Notaspiring to ‘‘brilliance,” 
and never posing for mere effect, he is content to 


52 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


be the practical ‘‘working member;” and he has ac- 
complished as much for his district, his state and 
his section, as the most silver-tongued orator, or the 
most ingrain ‘‘Chicane,” that ever sat on congres- 
sional leather. 

During the war of the ’60’s, some flings were 
made at Wheeler’s generalship; that he was nota 
strategist, was a poor disciplinarian, and similar 
‘*broad assertions.” The busy little general, if he 
heard them, was too occupied with his weightier 
objectors—in blue—to answer. But his country 
answered for him. He was from first to last the 
commander of all the cavalry of the Western Army. 
Mr. Davis, or the war department changed its 
chief command—Beauregard, Johnston, Bragg, 
Hood—but the chief command of the cavalry re- 
mained always Wheeler, with no demurs from com- 
mander, or from Richmond. 

In this later war—or rather since its close—slurs 
have been cast at the general’s blunt and just state- 
ment of his belief before the Army Investigating 
Committee; and a few spiteful remarks were made 
by little men, at his close relations with the presi- 
dent, during the late southern tour. ‘These were 
answered by the people of the whole country, in 
the wild acclaims that greeted his appearance 
everywhere. They drowned infant detraction ina 
flood of enthusiasm that swept from Omaha and 


53 


AS THE PUBLICIST. 


Chicago and Philadelphia—through the halls of 
Alabama’s legislature and the streets of his native 
Augusta. This is a mere historic mention, not 
a defence of General Wheeler. He needs no de- 
fence to any man who would recognize Truth, did 
he meet her at noon in a narrow lane. History 
must repeat herself, perhaps; and sometimes the 
repetition inspires one with the belief that the 
Harpies of eld were less creations of poetic fantasy 
than evolutions from human nature. 

The national estimate of this truly national pub- 
licist is pointed by an anecdote told the writer last 
summer; and, as it chanced, by ‘‘ the only soldier 
Mrs. Grover Cleveland ever kissed.” This sergeant, 
coming from Tampa on a train with a squad of 
sick Massachusetts boys, mentioned that the gen- 
eral had opposition for congress in his district. 
There was a general chorus of irate surprise among 
the Bay statesmen; and one lank, raw-boned fel- 
low raised a nasal voice to remark: 

‘“‘Well, by Gosh! ef they beat him thar, send 
him to Massachusetts and we’//send him to Con- 
gress!” 

There spoke nationalism for nationalism; patriot- 
ism for patriotism. 

Born in the South, educated in the North, enter- 
ing the army from New York, wielding the sword 
of a ‘‘rebel,” or of a ‘‘ patriot ” hero; representing a 


54 


JOSEPH WHrrEELOR. 


southern constituency, without friction from sec- 
tional jealousy, for the longest existent term; in 
the trenches, and equally in the wavering council 
of the generals—he stands forth the same Joe 
Wheeler; fearless for the right, respecting the 
rights of others—and clear-headed withal. 

If he be not type of that true nationalism, which 
makes America progressive and victorious, then has 
it no type—North, South, East or West! 

Loyal to his flag, his section, his friends—and to 
himself—he concretes what the writer tried to ex- 
press in his first lines after the days of Santiago: 


The Nation’s soldier, standing in the van, 


A lifelong lesson writes for youth to read : 
Truth to the State makes true American ! 


55 


V .—THE WHEELER FAMILY. 


When those of a family, known to a nation, are 
so respected and beloved by it, delicacy does not 
forbid somewhat of intrusion into its home circle. 
From hearing so much about some of its members, 
all the country is anxious to know more of all the 
Wheelers. 

There is sound foundation in human nature for 
the French axiom: Lon sang ne peut mentir ; and, 
as has been noted, the most popular American of 
today has in his veins ‘‘ good blood”—still hot, red 
and throbbing—which has never lied, and cannot. 
He comes, as was premised, from good old fighting 
stock, of English strain ; and it was the most wily 
judge of men—himself more soldier and statesman 
than priest—whom Bulwer made declare: 


No mongrels, boy, those island mastiffs ! 


Joseph Wheeler’s father, for whom he was named, 
was a wealthy and respected citizen of Georgia; a 
banker and planter near Augusta, and deeply inter- 
ested in the growth and progress of that town— 
which gave his son so royal a reception, on the 
recent southern tour of the president. His mother 
was Julia Knox Hull, daughter of the famous 


56 





THE WHEELER FAMILY. (Last picture taken.) 


Julia Knox Hull Wheeler. Thomas Harrison Wheeler. Annie Early Wheeler. 
Mrs. Ella Jones Wheeler. Joseph Wheeler, Jr. 


Carrie Peyton Wheeler. : d 
Lucy Louise Wheeler. 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


General William Hull, who had the friendship and 
confidence of Washington in the revolution and suc- 
ceeding border wars. ‘To this side, too, he traces 
English descent, through the early Puritan strain. 

The now world-known son of this noted pair was 
born at the Augusta plantation, on Sept. 10, 1836; 
and thus lacked six months of his twenty-fifth 
year when he resigned his life-dream of a career in 
the U. S. army and offered his sword to his native 
state. 

When the boy was but five years old, his mother 
died; and it was found that the once-great fortune 
had melted away in unsuccessful ventures, and in 
great part from that trait of helping his friends, 
which has proved so marked a motor of the son’s 
life-action. Then young Joseph left the South for 
the new skies of ‘‘ way Down East,” and the new 
care of maternal relatives. He went to school in 
Cheshire, Conn., for a while; but later went to 
New York, where he began to work for his own liv- 
ing at the age. of fourteen, when most southern 
boys of gentle birth were preparing for the high 
school. Perhaps this change of residence hastened 
his sturdy growth in character, beyond its natural 
development in warmer climate and under softer 
influences of a luxurious southern home. 

He largely educated himself, and gained friends 
by his quiet dignity and manliness. Among them 


59 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


was a congressman from New York who, by strange 
coincidence, bore his own family name, though no- 
wise related to him. This Mr. Wheeler appointed 
him to West Point, as acadet from New York; and 
he entered the army in his twenty-third year, as 
elsewhere detailed. 

Never what is known as a ‘‘ ladies’ man,” young 
Wheeler always held women in that high respect 
which is shared by all finer-natured men ; and, to 
this day, he regards the request of a lady with the 
samme punctilio that he does the command of his 
ranking officer. But it is not of record that he was 
ever the hero of affairs of the heart—beyond those 
scarless ones inevitable to adolesence; nor did the 
absorbing rush of the war let him turn to lighter 
and prettier ‘‘engagements,” as they did so many 
another gallant fellow. The mother of his idol- 
ized children was the one love of his long life. 

Diametrically opposite—in mental and physical 
mould; in theory, practice and tastes, as were the 
two men, this recalls gallant and gone Pierce 
Young. That other Georgia cavalryman-by-in- 
stinct was the only major general, in either army, 
younger than Wheeler, as he received that com- 
mission on his twenty-fourth birthday.* On the 


*When I made the hero of my novel, ‘‘The Puritan’s Daughter,”’ 
do this, and the critics declared it absurd, Young came to my 
rescue with the above statement of his own case. —THE AUTHOR, 


60 


THE WHEELER FAMILY. 


last occasion when Young and the writer dined to- 
gether—poor fellow! that was a merry party under 
the magnolias of Mobile’s bay shore—some one 
chaffed him about a noted war-belle, who had 
captured one of his most gallant brigade com- 
manders. 

‘*Don’t think I knew her,” the deau sabreur mut- 
tered, through a medium of crab pate. ‘‘While you 
fellows were flirting in the rear, I was fighting in 
the front!” 

And so, while equally brave, but less earnest and 
devoted, soldiers were receiving smiles from the 
sex as reward for privation and danger, the young 
g@eneral of the cavalry ‘‘was fighting at the front.” 
His only coquetting was with some blue-clad cav- 
alry chief—often an old Academy chum of his own 
—only to ‘‘throw him over” on the earliest oppor- 
tunity. But of love, Macaulay might have made 
Horatius say, as truly as of the other inevitable: 


To every man upon this earth 
Death cometh, soon or late! 


So, the warrior, invulnerable to sharpshooter’s 
lead, was hard hit at last by the little blind archer; 
but it was not until 1863—when in his twenty-sev- 
enth year—that he ‘‘ met his fate.” 

Miss Daniella Jones was the lovely and widely 
beloved daughter of Colonel Richard Jones, a noted 


61 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


Alabamian of that day, and Lucy W. Early; the 
family home being near Muscle Shoals on the Ten- 
nessee River. When scarcely sixteen, Miss Jones 
had married Mr. Benjamin Sherrod; but she had 
returned to her father’s hospitable roof in her wid- 
owhood, before she was yet out of her teens. 

Loyal to the South, indeed, and hospitable to her 
boys in gray, was that Alabama homestead, even 
amid the hardest privations of frequent raid and 
skirmish, back and forth. Its doors ever swung 
wide, and its larder was ever freely offered—even 
to the stinting of its more fortunate possessors— 
when footsore, or hungry, ‘‘ Johnny cum marchin’ 
home.” And in the absence of her father, his gen- 
tle and noble-hearted daughter was quick to dis- 
pense that sacred and—often too needful—hospital- 
ity. Hers was a loyal and constant character; and 
shines undimmed in those children, who today 
revere her memory scarcely more than they illus- 
trate her tender, practical and loving nurture of all 
that she saw best in their youth. 

When Wheeler’s cavalry crossed the Tennessee, 
near Muscle Shoals, on its return from his dashing 
and successful **‘ Ride round Rosecrans,” it was near 
midnight; and, ere his worn and hungry boys 
reached the longed-for and familiar Jones mansion, 
the family had all retired. But those were not 
days for ceremony, when ‘‘our boys” called; so 


62 


THE WHEELER FAMILY. 


the daughter of the house quickly rose and drew 
latch for the gray jackets. 

It is related—by the same friend of the general 
who wrote the sketches that end this book—that 
he did not meet the lady until the succeeding 
day. She had inquired about him of the men, and 
expressed a desire to see him, when one of them 
laughed and said: 

‘‘ Well, madam, you won’t see a great deal of 
him when you do.” 

That cavalryman was more joker than prophet. 
His general was presented; and it was said to have 
been a case of ‘‘ love at first sight;” though unlike 
most of such it lasted through a life time—even 
after the object of it was lost to the vision of one of 
the twain. 

The lady was first interested by the self-forget- 
ness and sadness of the victorious leader, on re- 
ceiving reports from his subordinates of killed and 
casualties. This was the beginning of an acquaint- 
ance that soon ripened into a mutual attachment, 
resulting in an engagement that brought the 
couple to the altar, early after the peace—on Feb- 
ruary Sth, 1866. 

It was the beginning, too, of three decades of 
an ideal union; in which devotion, congeniality 
and common aims made them not alone one—but 
made the entire family seem as one. For the 


63 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


Wheelers are a united clan, each devoted to the 
other and to their home ;-ever forgetting self—as 
has been so strongly proved of late—in tender 
thoughtfulness for the rest of the loved ones. 
Joseph Wheeler—the great Confederate veteran, 
the true and influential politician—/acile princeps 
of the later war, is the hero and idol of a whole 
people ; but he is not to them the idol that he is at 
heme— pedestaled on the infinite love of those 
gentle daughters, to whose care their mother en- 
trusted him, when she passed on before, to await 
them all. 

The Wheeler family that made their old Ala- 
bama home, at Wheeler, an ideal ‘‘capital of 
Love’s pure realm,” comprised this father and 
mother and seven children—five daughters and two 
sons. ‘Two years ago, the All-Wise dispensation 
called the mother from the tender care of the chil- 
dren she had brought up in His sight. One of her 
daughters had preceded her to the beyond ; and the 
people of a whole country have just sent out their 
hearts in genuine sympathy to those left desolate 
by the sudden taking away of their youngest, 
brightest and best. 

Joseph Wheeler, jr,—the third of that name—is 
the first born. He graduated from the Academy in 
1895; and is now a second lieutenant in the Fourth 
Artillery, U.S. A., and served through the Cuban 


64 


THE WHEELER FAMILY. 


campaign on his father’s staff, as aide-de-camp. 
That he served faithfully evoes without saying. He 
proved worthy son of that father in field and 
camp; and is another young Alabamian who 
hinted what the old Gulf State might have recorded 
on history of today, had her young war-dogs been 
loosened for the fray. 

Miss Lucy Louise is the eldest daughter; and 
next to her comes Miss Annie Early, bearer of her 
maternal grandmother’s family name. Ella, the 
next daughter, died in early youth; and Miss Julia 
Knox Hull revives the name of her father’s mother. 
Thomas Harrison Wheeler is the last record in the 
family Bible ; and the one just above it is Carrie 
Peyton Wheeler. 

Inscrutable indeed, to finite ken, are His ways 
Who gives us life, and takes it for His ends—some- 
times in form so seeming harsh that mortal weak- 
ness must rebel. 

The Wheeler family were reunited once more; 
happy in their united work for good at Montauk, 
and seemingly safe from battle and from sudden 
death. Four of them—the general, his two boys 
and his gently heroic daughter—had been in Cuba. 
All had returned unharmed by wound, or climate. 
Then—while all four were busied with their work 
of love and duty; while the entire family were 
serving the sick, and letting their whole hearts go 


65 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


out into their work of love for strangers—came 
His touch, to lay a desolation and a woe unspeak- 
able upon them all. It came with no warning— 
with no seeming reason—upon the one whose youth 
and health, and necessity to his own, made it least 
of all probable—least of all, bearable. 

‘‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” 
But there was a pall over that grief-frozen group 
at Montauk, so heavy and so black that no mortal 
eye might see through it one single ray of light 
then ! 

The gentle, gallant young naval cadet had just 
returned from service in Cuban waters, and had 
been assigned to temporary duty with his father. 
He was the idol of that father; the joy and hope 
and pride of those sisters, whose loving hands and 
pure precepts had brought their ‘‘ Bonny Boy” to 
the threshold of manhood, from that childhood left 
them as a holy trust by their mother’s latest breath. 

‘‘He had been so tenderly loved and protected, 
and shielded from every harsh wind, all of his 
flower-like life! The boy, in whose spotless char- 
acter was found the fruition of all their fondest 
hopes and ambitions and aspirations; who had 
never been anything but an unalloyed pleasure and 
pride, all of his days! That he should meet and 
conquer the darkness and shadow of Death—all 
alone, in the cold, dark water in a storm, without 





66 





THOMAS HARRISON WHEELER; 
NAVAL CADET, ATTACHED TO HIS FATHER’S STAFF. 


Drowned off Montauk Point, N. Y., Sept. 7, 1898. 





JOSEPH WHEELER. 


one tender word or loving touch from the hearts 
near by, that would so gladly have died for his 
sake |! 

‘‘When he came back, we knew, from the kingly 
majesty of his face—on which a conquering glory 
seemed to shine—that he had, in no way, faltered 
or failed in what seemed his simple duty. His 
companion was in distress, and he would not leave 
him,” 

These words, written by one who knows best how 
the dead boy was loved and is mourned, are quoted 
here as wholly adequate. Nothing the author 
might write could add to them. They tell the 
whole story of the beautiful and blameless life; of 
the sacramental death. 

Tom Wheeler went into the storm-swollen sea to 
bathe. His companion needed help and the true 
boy went to his aid. He went to seeming death: 
and entered into eternal Life. 

This author has never made remote pretense to 
being a poet. Like allstudents of a Jesuit college, 
he learned verse-measuring—partly in the curricu- 
lum course; partly, it must be confessed, for ‘‘pun- 
ishments.” Sometimes, when stirred by unusual 
emotions, he has found their expression better in 
numbers than in prose. One of these occasions was, 
when—after a whole people had held its breath for 
many hours, suspenseful but still hoping—the awful 


69 


THE WHEELER FAMILY. 


certainty came that the darling of the Wheeler 
family had been snatched from their corporeal clasp. 
While the dull truth still thudded on his ear, came 
the lines that found their best meed in acceptance 
by the stricken father and daughters: 


SOLACE. 


Covered with honors—crowned with fadeless bays— 
A hero sits and gazes o’er the sea ; 
His numbed sense deafened to a nation’s praise, 
Resounding ceaselessly. 


For three wan women, crushed by sudden loss, 
Group at his knee, and vainly strive to bear, 
For his dear sake, the overweighting cross— 
The last born is not there ! 


Snatched from warm hearts, that gloried in his youth 
And promise, by cold clasping of the tide 
That gave back clay for what was life and truth 
And budding manly pride, 


O’er fair young Valor, couched in endless sleep 
On Death’s cold breast, unwak’ning teardrops fall, 
For Love and Grief their endless vigil keep— 
His Country spreads the pall. 


What now to them doth glory signify? 
What solace that a nation’s freighted heart 
Throbs sympathy, where late its pulsings high 
Bade only triumph start? 


70 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


Not yet—while dulled and staggered by the blow 

So seeming harsh—bewildered—sore distressed— 
May come the full sense of the truth they know: 
That His ways are the best. 


Yet even now speaks low the one refrain : 
Stunned by the loss of brother and of son, 
They hear, soft echoing from the Cross again : 
‘Father, Thy will be done!” 


VI.—THe Army ANGEL. 


He who scoffs at heredity is a shallow student of 
physiology, and a thoughtless onlooker at the mys- 
teries of Nature. He cannot escape the belief that 
the pugilist may rear the poet; that the plowhorse 
is the peer of the thoroughbred. 

When this inadequate review of a long and most 
useful life was inscribed to the lady whose name 
honors its pages, it was not because she is heroic 
daughter of a hero, nor yet because her name is on 
every lip in loving cadence of praise. It was be- 
cause of her great and selfless work of love, under- 
taken for the humble and the suffering, and carried 
to an end that crowned her with unfading bays— 
sprung from the brave hearts that knew her best; 


71 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


who throned her high in their admiring love, and in 
- her queenship of it knew her as the ‘‘Army Angel.” 

Simple tribute, but grand, was this to any work 
of woman; but priceless beyond words, when fairly 
won by merit, and worn with all humanity. 

For that Wheeler trait shines with clear, white 
gleam about the whole life of this exceptional girl. 
Yet she is only a ¢4vwe woman. There is not one 
point in her character—as it shows in the search- 
light of an unsought and repugnant publicity, from 
which she would shrink back into herself—which 
could remotely suggest ‘‘ the new woman.” 

Miss Wheeler is, by descent, a Daughter of the 
Revolution, as she is a Daughter of the Confed- 
eracy; and her work has forced her into a necessary 
prominence in both. Yet she belongs to both jure 
divino; with no suggestion of self-illustration—no 
suspicion that she is more noteworthy than any one 
of her sisters in their work of love and patriotism. 

Still, no one who reads the bare, cold facts of 
her later life can fail to recall Elizabeth Barrett’s 
‘‘A Court Lady”—different in degree and in sur- 
rounding as were the days in Santiago and in Italy. 

No higher tribute than that titie, ‘‘An Army 
Angel,’ was ever paid by valor to true womanhood. 
Those rough, but gallant, men who upheld the flag 
under which they had enlisted, through every trial of 
blistering sun, tropical rain, leaden hail—and most 


72 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


of all,through long siege of the dread, unseen foe, 
yellow fever—meant no empty compliment when 
their hearts moved their parched lips. They knew 
that this tender girl—the only non-immune nurse 
permitted to enter Santiago—was not a professional 
nurse, but a volunteer who had come to their 
rescue, impelled by resistless sense of duty. 

But those brave fellows cared not that Miss An- 
nie Karly Wheeler was the daughter of their gener- 
al—save that she was his character-daughter, and 
had come to ser duty, even as he has sprung to his 
—because it seemed to her to be duty. 

And the daughter has proved, through this de- 
mand upon herinborn greatness of soul—just as the 
father has proved so long, in war and peace—the 
axiomatic truth. ‘The ‘‘good blood” that had come 
down from revolutionary days, in pure and undi- 
luted stream, ‘‘could not lie,” in her veins, or in his. 

Very much of bathos, and more of error, have 
been written about Miss Wheeler’s truly remark- 
abie work. The Munchausens in little who have 
‘‘filled space” for portions of the press have done 
herreal injustice,where their weakness meant praise. 
To compare their statements—did they still live, 
and merit comparison—this simple-hearted, brave 
and earnest woman would seem a composite of 
Jeanne d’ Arc, Florence Nightingale, the ‘‘Good 
Lady Bertha” and ‘‘Alice in Wonderland.” But, 


73 


THE ARMY ANGEL. 


happily, the truth of history lives, and all of jour- 
nalism is not jaundiced. 

In very truth, to all who know her—and to those 
fit to comprehend her, unknown—Miss Annie 
Wheeler is simply a high-natured southern girl, 
whose inborn truth, brave heart and more than 
ordinary common sense were aided by the God-given 
gifts of steady nerves and a strong constitution. 
She went forth on her mission, from a resistless 
sense of love and duty to her own; she saw the field 
broaden before her into a vista of love-work un- 
dreamed of, and she accepted the trust He placed 
in her hands, unfalteringly. Pure-hearted as fabled 
Galabad, she reached out her hand for Love, and 
erasped the Grail ! 

Once amid the touching, but hideous, surround- 
ings of a pestilent-fever camp, all her true woman’s 
heart went out to the suffering brother—known, or 
stranger alike. She served one and all with a ten- 
derness that made each word a prayer—each touch 
a benison. And she did this all with never one idea 
that she was a heroine—simply because she was a 
true woman who, throughit all had no one thought 
of self. . 

Reticence is as marked a characteristic of Miss 
Wheeler, as are gentle courage and selflessness ; 
and it is simple truth to say that—returning to be 
confronted with an echoing fame, that surprised her 





74 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


more than any other—she has never once posed. 
Indeed, she shrunk back from public gaze into new 
duties ; and, to this hour, she cannot be brought to 
belief that she has done aught, which ‘‘any other 
girl,” similarly placed, would not have done as 
gladly, and fully as well as she. 

In this belief—and for good reason—the Nation 
does not share; and every soldier of the Cuban 
army would denounce it as rank heresy—as treason 
to the queenship of real womanhood. Yet, Miss 
Wheeler only wonders at it all; willspeak nothing 
of her work—and especially nothing of her feel- 
ings—save to the few trusted friends to whom she 
simply expresses her surprise that ‘‘a plain duty” 
should be made so much of. 

All the world, at home and abroad, knows—in a 
disconnected, nebulous fashion—that General Wheel- 
er’s daughter was an army nurse; that she braved 
dangers of many kinds, with a calm, trustful cour- 
age that a veteran soldier might have lacked ; that 
she is famous, and a popular idol, even to millions 
who have never even seen her picture. But the 
true story of her mission and of its outcome, has 
never before been given in succinct and consecutive 
form, for the simple reason that but one person liv- 
ing could possibly write it; and that she has a 
shrinking horror at the idea of putting her motives 
and her feelings before public gaze. 


75 


THE ARMY ANGEL. 


It will therefore be all the more interesting for 
that public, which knows Miss Wheeler so widely, 
yet so little, to read her own brief and simple re- 
cital of the story. It was written in a personal 
letter to a trusted friend, and with no possible 
thought that it would even be seen by other eyes. 
But that letter so convincingly asserts her to be 
true daughter of true sire—it so appeals to every 
man’s heart—and to every woman’s—by its touch- 
ing simplicity and naturalness—that it belongs to 
history, even without its brief statement of facts 
that are wholly unknown. 

Feeling this keenly, the author of this sketch 
gained reluctant assent to show an extract of Miss 
Wheeler’s letter to the world, just as she wrote it 
to her friend, and with no word changed. Writing 
under recent date, she says: 


“‘T cannot say that I have ever had an aptitude 
for nursing, although I have always been so sorry 
for those who were in sorrow, need, sickness or any 
other affliction. But in my mother’s lifetime, she 
gave us such tender, sheltering care that we were 
never allowed to go into the presence of any illness 
of any kind. She was always afraid of contagion, 
for us; and she also thought it was a pity for young 
people to come in contact with sadness or trouble, 
so long as it could be avoided. 


76 





— 


MISS ANNIE EARLY WHEELER, 


In the uniform in which she won the love and 
admiration of the world. 


JOSEPH WHHELER 


‘*She always tried to fill our lives with sunshine 
and to keep away the shadows. With her tender 
love and faith in her children, she always said that 
she thought that, being raised in this way, if any 
emergency or necessity ever arose in amy line, they 
would be as ready to meet it and to do their duty 
as though she had subjected them to severe training 
of any kind. 

‘*When the war came, and a// our boys (Papa and 
my two brothers) went, I felt that to calmly sit at 
home and hold my hands, and to read in the news- 
papers the accounts of ¢hezy dangers and of the 
needs in the hospitals—and do nothing about it at 
all— would be maddening ! 

“*T felt that surely, with a willing heart and will- 
ing hands and feet, and an obedient -spirit, I could 
do something—no matter how trivial—for some one ; 
and I knew I could help my own if they were sick— 
and I just must be near them. 

‘Everybody told me what a vast mistake I was 
making; that I could do zo good, and would do a 
great deal of harm, as I would get sick at once and 
would require care and cause a great deal of 
anxiety to others. And my swell friends were in- 
expressibly shocked at the idea. 

‘‘T applied to the Government, and was not ac- 
cepted because I was not atrained nurse. Then I 
tried the D. A, R.—of which organization lama 


79 


THE ARMY ANGEL. 


member—with the same result. I had no assign- 
ment and had to fight my own way, inch by inch 
and step by step, against the advice of everyone— 
all Papa’s friends and my own, both old and young. 
I had not ovze word of encouragement from begin- 
ning to end; and it was bitterly hard, as you can 
readily understand. 

‘‘When we reached Guantanamo with thirty 
trained nurses on board, we were informed that 
none but immunes could enter Santiago, on ac- 
count of the prevalence of yellow fever there; and I 
was told that Imust go on to Porto Rico. But 
General Miles kindly sent word from his ship, that 
if I still persisted in entering that fever-stricken 
place, after all the dangers were laid before 
me—atid the advice of all in authority to the con- 
trary ——I might do so. The Assistant Surgeon 
General told me that he considered it almost cer- 
tain death forme to go; but I gladly availed my- 
self of the permission, as Papa and my brothers 
were there. 

‘‘All the trained nurses went on to Porto Rico. 
We never had any trained nurses in Santiago, as 
we had only immunes. I was the only non-im- 
mtine who was ever allowed to enter. 

‘‘When I first reached there, I rode ona man’s sad- 
dle on a rough cavalry horse, seven miles in the 
country to Papa’s camp, and found Joe desperately 


80 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


ill with yellow fever; and Papa did not think he 
would recover. It was my good fortune to be able 
to render him some service and make him a little 
more comfortable. I went out on horseback in the 
morning, and returned at night. 

‘‘When he began to get better, I was placed in 
charge of a hospital in Santiago; and then followed 
the most beautiful, sacred and precious experience 
of my whole life. I shall always be devoutly 
and humbly thankful for having the opportunity 
of rendering some slight service to those gallant 
soldiers, whose patient endurance and noble 
fortitude, in those long, hot, agonizing, fevered 
days in the hospital were simply beyond expres- 
sion. 

“It was a wonderful privilege to be able to ob- 
serve the grand heroism of my fellow-countrymen. 
The admiration and reverence which the hospital 
taught me for the character of the American sol-. 
dier—in the face of any enemy—is to me a priceless 
treasure. 

“‘T was on my feet from five in the morning until 
fate every night, and yet I never knew an ache, or 
a pain, or a sense of heat or fatigue, so long as I 
had the privilege of serving in the hospitals at 
Santiago and Montauk. I put my whole heart and 
soul in my work, as a prayer that God would spare 
my own beloved; and I was never unmindful of the 


81 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


wonderful blessings of having all three of my own 
come home safely.” 

* * * * * *K * * * 
How finite isour human wisdom—even in its love! 
With that pure prayer in her heart, and spoken 

by her every action, this loving girl was to feel His 
hand laid upon her and hers with a heaviness well 
nigh past the bearing. Their ‘‘Bonny Boy” went 
from them so full of life and hope and happiness— 
so wholly severed from aught of gloom and woe. 
He came back with the tide, cold and still forever 
in the flesh; but—as has been so tenderly told— 
with the amaranthine crown of the martyr to duty 
haloed about his fair brow. 

But the loving heart—well nigh broken by the 
blow—humbly poured itself out in a great, un- 
shaken Trust. In her own poem on her loss, Annie 
Wheeler wrote: 

I was there upon the waters wild, 
And took his hand; 
And, thro’ the gloom, 
Led safely home 
My child! 

* * * * * * * * * 

Miss Wheeler tells her own story of her work. 
It is the simple recital of a simple-hearted girl, with 
a brave spirit anda pure soul. But it is history, 
too, though with more than history’s truth and 
earnestness and pathos; and between its lines we 


82 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


read volumes of the unwritten story of our war with 
Spain. 

When that army was recalled, to recuperate on 
its own shores, this constant girl refused to leave 
the charges she had learned to love and venerate 
in their simplicity of bravery and endurance, and 
who now needed her more than ever. 

Camp Wickoff, at Montauk, was a hot-bed of 
fever and other camp-diseases; the men—worn, 
emaciated and ill fed—were worse prepared to fight 
their insidious foe. Miss Wheeler’s father was 
commandant, with powers almost autocratic reposed 
in him by special and personal order of the presi- 
dent, who so fully knew and trusted him.” But the 
daughter went her way as simply as the hired 
nurses, seeking no single favor or privilege beyond 
that highest one to her—mitigation of suffering. 
She walked those hideous wards with a great glory 
of charity on her face; with the song in hef heart 
that another grand woman penned: 

These wounds are more precious than ghastly; 
Time presses her lips to each scar, 


As she chants of a glory that vastly 
Transcends all the horrors of war! 


Then—there on the very altar of her self-abne- 
gation—came the blow that, for the moment, froze 
the pulses in all the hearts that had held first and 
closest the life of her ‘‘Bonny boy.” Unspeakable 


83 


THE ARMY ANGEL. 


in its suddenness and seeming cruelty, it prostrated 
the fearless old warrior, his unselfish daughters 
and his brave soldier son. 

Then, when the good old blood that had sent 
them all to face duties and dangers—trivial to 
nothingness now, before this giant woe—began 
orice more to move through their veins, the daugh- 
ter and the father went back to duty; outwardly re- 
signed, and ministering to those entrusted to them. 

It was the epic of heroic selflessness ! 

When Montauk was no more, Miss Wheeler found 
her busy—and now skillful—hands fully occupied 
at Huntsville. ‘Thence—when need for her minis- 
tration no longer held her there--she went to St. 
Luke’s Hospital, at New York, for a practical 
finishing course in army hospital work. She had 
enlisted once in Charity’s white-clad army, as a 
volunteer. She had determined that, next time, 
she would show her service-chevrons, as a ‘‘ vete- 
raha tate 

One reminiscence of Miss Wheeler’s past is a pro- 
pos to her present. One of the author’s friends 
was on the train that bore her home from Knox- 
ville, after she had assisted at the wedding of her 
friend, Miss McGhee, to Mr. C. C. Neely, of Mem- 
phis. Their fellow traveler was an old woman 
from Walker county, Georgia; a simple old wo- 
man, green as the most astrigent persimmon, ez 


84 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


route to visit her sonin Texas. ‘This nervous old 
dame—who had perhaps never left home before— 
had been robbed at the depot. She rent the air 
with sobs; between them repeated her piteous 
tale, ‘‘like Niobe, all tears,” and finally went off 
into real hysterics. 

Miss Annie Wheeler—a young, untried girl 
and, of course, unknown to fame—had never seen 
the poor old creature before; but she promptly 
took her in charge, comforted her— with all her 
father’s promptitude and all her own gentleness 
of speech and touch; and finally mastered the 
rebellious nerves. Then, practical as well as 
beneficent, she took up a collection, made good 
the old stranger’s loss, and sent her on her way 
rejoicing. 

And now, when fame and honors have found her, 
hiding from them, she innocently writes her friend: 
‘‘T cannot say that I have a natural aptitude for 
nursing.” 

But while pursuing her even way, bowed by a 
weight that made all words almost unmeaning, 
the heart of a whole people was speaking to her; 
first in popular acclaim, later through more formal 
modes. 

For the first time in the history of the state, 
the General Assembly of Alabama passed a vote of 
thanks to one of her daughters for public services. 


85 


THE ARMY ANGEL. 


The joint resolution, introduced into the house by 
Mr. Wallace, of Madison, was passed unanimously 
under suspension of the rules; the senate taking 
similar action immediatly upon that vote. This 
exceptional joint resolution reads: 


Whereas, Alabama’s beloved daughter, Miss 
Annie Early Wheeler, inspired by patriotism, saw 
fit to follow the invading army of our Government 
into Cuba; and there did administer to the sick 
and comfort the dying soldiers, amid the horrors 
of war and dread of plague; therefore be it 

Peesolved: by this House—the Senate concurring 
—that the State of Alabama thanks,—and the 
same be and are hereby extended by Alabama’s 
General Assembly to this Noble Woman, for her 
brave deeds and unexampled devotion to her coun- 


try. 

SEE further: 'That this resolution be en- 
grossed, and original signatures of his Excellency 
the Governor, and with those of the Speaker of the 
House and the President of the Senate, be signed 
thereto ; and that the Secretary of State be, and is 
hereby instructed to forward to Miss Wheeler a 
copy of this resolution, together with the compli- 
ments of the State of Alabama. 

The letter of transmission enclosing the reso- 
lution, reads as follows: 

STATE OF ALABAMA, 
OFFICE OF SECRETARY OF STATE, 
MontTGOMERY, January 31, 1899. 

My Dear Miss Wheeler: It gives me great pleas- 

ure to forward you, with the compliments of the 


86 











TRANSPORT “ALLEGHANY,” INO. 17: 


ON WHICH MAJOR-GENERAL JOSEPH WHEELER AND STAFF WENT TO CUBA. 





JOSEPH WHEELER. 


State of Alabama, by this mail, a copy of joint res- 
olution which was passed both by the House and 
the Senate of Alabama, by unanimous vote of each 
body. 

I beg to suggest that never before, according to 
my information, has the Alabama General Assem- 
bly done so much honor to any woman, and it 
gives me pleasure to assure you that the members 
of the legislative body feel that they have honored 
themseives in thus complimenting you. 

With the greatest respect, Yours truly, 

Rosert P. McDavin, 
Secretary of State. 


But, although this is the first time she has been 
thanked in those historic halls, by formal resolu- 
tion, Miss Wheeler had been honored there before 
-by genuine impulse of manly admiration. That 
deserved compliment came spontaneously to the lips 
of the chief of our armies and navies, who had met, 
and been instructed by her, in the sad details of 
need at Montauk. On his reception by its governor, 
in the capitol of her native state, during his late 
tour, President McKinley said : 

‘‘Alabama, like all states of the Union, North and 
South, has been loyal to the flag, and steadfastly 
devoted to the American nation and to American 
honor, * * * * Everybody is talking about 
General Wheeler, one of the bravest of the brave. 
But I wish to speak to you of that sweet little 


89 


THE ARMY ANGEL. 


daughter, who followed him to Santiago, and min- 
istered to the sick at Montauk!” 

But not alone do men honor and praise this mod- 
est, placid girl. At their latest session in Wash- 
ington city, the Daughters of the Revolution—of 
which she is a member—paid her the tribute of 
election as Vice President General. 

Of course Miss Wheeler accepted the honor; but 
immediately thereafter she wrote to a loyal and 
sympathetic friend, in all the simplicity of merito- 
rious modesty: 

‘““They generously made me a Vice President 
General, which proves how much they all loved the 
soldiers, and would gladly have done better than I, 
if they had had the opportunity; and they have no 
way of showing it now, except to confer this honor 
upon their humble sister-woman, who had the good 
fortune to be a personal witness to the heroism of 
our soldiers.” 

Truly did those men Annie Early Wheeler so 
well served, and still loves so well, name her their 
‘*Army Angel.” 

As no woman of this century has done her duty, 
as it revealed itself to her, better or more selflessly, 
so none has been more lovingly named. Her title 
of soul-nobility will live with her, and after her, 
when she is no longer only the Army Angel. 


90 


VIL. In ‘* Reconstruction” DAvys. 


There is no political Brown-Sequard. 

The story of the nations teaches that the ‘‘elixir 
of life” cannot be injected by the politico-economic 
hypodermic. 

All attempts to force, under the skin of a people, 
unaccustomed political toxicants have produced 
only tumors. These have been followed, often, by 
blood poison; never by actual sanity. 

In this simple truth lies the one crucial—perhaps 
the only vea/—problem of ‘‘expansion” today. 

To prove this, it is only necessary to glance at 
the present map of Europe, in the light of her past 
history; to consider the ‘‘empire” erected by the 
needs of British commerce, and cemented by the 
astute shopmanship of D’ Israeli. 

No thinker need look upon the skyrockety unea- 
siness of William, the Restless, to recall 


How dearly the Pole loves ‘“‘his Father’’, the Czar. 


But, happily, America has nothing Tartar in all 
her composite make-up. And President McKinley 
has never been wont to play ‘‘the Czar.” ‘That 
potentate of cis-Atlantic steppes sits, self-enthron- 
ed, at the eastern end of the avenue; and it is 


91 


IN RECONSTRUCTION DAYS. 


plainly as evident as announced that he is ‘‘against 
expansion.” 

But the problem of the new possessions is not to 
reconstruct them, by what Zony Lumpkin calls the 
‘“‘rule of thumb”; rather to assimilate them after 
their swallowing, by the slower but more digestive 
process of Americanizing in fact. 

‘‘Reconstruction,” as it was misnamed, only 
bred new and dangerous germs in the southern 
body-politic. Out of its forced syringe came the 
scalawag and carpetbagger; new forms and noi- 
some, and dangerous to sectional health. 

Indeed, under that attempt at ‘‘heroic surgery” 
to cure ill-diagnosed troubles, the local victims of 
malpractice quivered on the vivisection table, al- 
most in articulo mortis, That the quackery did 
not kill the national patient as well, is due solely 
to the strength of his original constitution. 

Not even a glance at General Wheeler’s Jost del- 
lum career could fail to take in something of that 
unsavory, while unhappy, era that followed the 
close of actual war with what was 


The viler, as underhand—not openly—bearing the sword. 


His earliest political steps were taken over the 
hot smouldering of disrupted conditions; their crust 
still hot, and threatening each moment to burst 
anew into consuming flame. 


92 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


He had moved to Alabama, while she was still 
in the crushing coil of the political constrictor— 
whose sire was greed—whose dam was powerlust. 
Its fangs were sucking her substance; its fetid 
breath parching effort into sickened spasm; its evil 
bulk swelling with unwonted glut. 

The fair and once strong victim—shackled by 
weight of myopic legislation—was struggling in 
weakening effort to be free. But already the drain 
had sapped her powers; and as yet no Persens had 
come to slay her tormentor. 

Substance, effort—almost hope—had withered 
in her veins: only the heroic spirit lived amid the 
hot fumes of the modern Medusa’s baleful breath. 

All of the truths of that era—imposed upon one- 
half of the same people by the folly of its other moiety 
—will probably never be written iu history. Few of 
them are yet known, save to its surviving sufferers. 

In this era of ‘‘ peace and good will,’ in which 
all the Union joins hands, .it is no intent of the 
writer to revive recollections that had best be bur- 
ied—if they prove not as Kugene Aram’s murdered 
man, and be not refused hiding even by the grave. 
But those times made men. ‘Those who were made 
already, it developed into the paladins of peace. 
And one of these was Joseph Wheeler. 

Therefore, this is needful glance at a period that 
—God be thanked!—can never come again; a period 


93 


IN RECONSTRUCTION DAYS. 


that had not come then, had other than a thing of 
whim and straw filled the seat of his martyred pre- 
decessor. For it is as true as Holy Writ that there 
had been no ‘‘Reconstruction” had Lincoln lived. 
There could have been none had a firm and deft 
touch, like that of the present executive, been upon 
the helm. 

In either case, the protocols written under the 
lifting smoke of battle between Grant and Lee— 
Sherman and Jo. Johnston—would have been car- 
ried out. The worn and depleted South would 
have been given time to rest—then to recuperate, 
instead of being thrust, unarmed and unfriended, 
into a new and viler struggle, equally for honor and 
for life! 

But the echo of the murderous madman’s pistol 
shattered the nerves of all the North; driving men 
to a frenzy that was part vengeance, and more 
fear. Rigor seemed to the popular mind there the 
only means of conserving the new and hard-won 
peace; cunning greed and unscrupulous ambition 
played upon popular error, for their own ends. 

None paused to consider that this must be a flat 
and disastrous failure; that it hurt the North in 
every material view, by ‘‘frosting” the laying fac- 
ulties of her golden-goose; that it was puerile and 
illogical from every point of view save that of the 
nimble Awuéolycus, who flocked into its opportunities 


94 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


from every section; ‘‘his pickers and stealers” 
twitching for ‘‘ swag.” 

None reasoned how it must, in the nature of 
things, at last hoist petard-like the radical engi- 
neers who invented it. It had become a popular 
cry; madness ruled the hour; none asked on what 
the cry was based. Yet, to this day—when Peace 
sits under her olive, sprouting as Jonah’s gourd; 
when oldtime enemies hold combined reunions, and 
Mason-and-Dixonites have coiled their ‘‘ line” upon 
national fences—no man has told us in what we 
were to be reconstructed, nor by what process. 

It was flatly illogical, on either horn of its dilem- 
ma. If the process was to be material, it was as 
the highwayman should ask his freshly-robbed vic- 
tim to join him in a corner in wheat; if political, 
and to keep the Union of the states intact, it was 
flatly giving the lie to the successful issue of the 
war just waged to keep us in, when we too hastily 
tried to get out; if moral, then verily strange 
priests indeed were sent to our conversion 

Looking back at it now, through the bright vista 
of successful years succeeding, there is a grim hu- 
mor mixed with all the ghastliness of ‘‘ Recon- 
struction’s” days; yet coldly true glimpses of their 
actual realities, just here, may serve the ‘‘ truth of 
history.” aud tnexpertus loquor. 'The writer was 
participant in those scenes; a private in the great 


95 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


struggle in which Joseph Wheeler was one of the 
leaders. 

And even then—in his political youth, and in a 
new community amid almost strangers—the indom- 
itable will, perseverance and discretion of the man 
early made him a marked one. Ere long, these 
traits showed so clearly, in the light of his absolute 
honesty and untiring zeal, that he became the idol, 
no less than the leader, of his home people. 

The mistake of}‘‘ Reconstruction” leftno tangible 

residuum, save in the pockets of the adventurers it 
bred. Itretarded the real—and inevitable—material 
reconstruction of the South, for ten years of abso- 
lute uselessness and for twenty more of their usu- 
fruct. 
Directly out of it grew the ‘‘ Solid South”—itself 
a bugaboo drawback to steady and rapid recupera- 
tion, but a necessity for very existence and self- 
preservation, where 


The spirit of murder worked, in the very means of life. 


The Solid South, concreted into a threatening 
political enginery, antagonized capital and retarded 
immigration. Meanwhile it gave no adequate com- 
pensation, save in moral regards. ‘Those recon- 
struction fungi, the carpetbaggers, came from all 
sections with greedy impartiality. They were 
from East and West and North; their only needed 


96 








SHEPH WHEELER. 


JO 


2SS UNIFORM OF MAJOR-GENERAL. 


FULL DR 


IN 





IN RECONSTRUCTION DAYS. 


credentials being alleged ‘‘loyalty ” to the govern- 
ment they disgraced. Brains, or capital; even 
honesty and clean reputation, were in no wise essen- 
tials for such success as they came to achieve— 
these bummers, camp followers and scullions of 
the regular army of the victorious party. They 
came for booty only; but to filch, not conquer, it. 
They loudly vaunted themselves the saviors of the 
raw and ignorant freedmen; lived among them, 
and preyed upon their credulous natures. They 
held continuous camp-meeting; leading in prayer 
for abolition of the hand-tied white native, and sang 
everywhere the legendary hymn of forty acres and 
a mule. Among them were few real old soldiers, 
fewer still who had won titles they disported, or 
had had either credit, or social standing, at home. 

The ‘‘seizin’” of the Norman and his iron grip 
upon the Saxon throat were gently astute states- 
manship—the touch of the velvet glove-—-when 
compared with thiscarpetbag invasion. ‘I‘he better 
class of incoming aliens could not endure the appel- 
lation, nor blind themselves to its sure results. 
Yet, a not unnatural prejudice makes the less 
thoughtful southerner class all strangers, incoming 
at that moment, under the general head. 

In General Wheeler’s state there were and are 
notable proofs that all the new comers were not 
‘‘pirds of a feather.” A number of them were 


99 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


democrats—opposed to the dominant party and lit- 
erally loathing its then methods of coersive conver- 
sion. With one of these the writer chanced to be 
long and closely associated in business and politics 
—William Dalton Mann, now of New York. He 
had been a gallant foe, when commanding his regi- 
ment of Michigan cavalry—as is vouched by that 
best authority on such, General Wade Hampton—but 
was arampant democrat. He came to Alabama as 
a resident and citizen; invested in property and 
manufacturing ; bought the old and then noted 
Mobile Register and poured hot shot into the vile 
Falstaffian army of the invasion of filch. 

There were also true and honest men among the 
republican newcomers; some of the government 
officials doing as Colonel Mann had done, in all 
things save the political one. ‘The present collector 
of the port of Mobile, for instance, has done more 
than most natives to build up the mining interests 
of his adopted state. General Joseph W. Burke 
was a gallant soldier; he has been, for near a life- 
time now, a most useful and respected citizen of 
Alabama. So has his official neighbor and old war 
comrade, Colonel Morris D. Wickersham, the dis- 
trict attorney; both men having held their offices 
under different administrations, backed by the 
unanimous approval of local democrats. So has the 
past and present postmaster of the same city, Hon. 


100 


IN RECONSTRUCTION DAYS. 


P. D. Barker; a lifelong Alabamian, whose ample 
means and business sagacity have been devoted to 
building up her interests, where blinder politicians 
began by tearing them down. Another native and 
lifelong republican—ever equally staunch for his 
principles and his people,and withal a modest scholar 
and humanitarian—is Hon. Fred. G. Bromberg. He 
has never departed from his party tenets; but the 
democrats of the first district sent him to congress ; 
his work for harbors, quarantine and other material 
advance was the pioneer effort; and his labor as 
national commissioner at Chicago’s exposition made 
his state prominent, without the shadow of an 
exhibit. 

> These examples come up at random, but there are 
many others. Such men saw and despised the 
methods of the reconstruction rabble; and their 
judgment of it doubtless brought it to too-late 
death and indecent burial. They sympathized with 
the disfranchised and law-manacled home people. 
They became de facto southerners, so soon as they 
invested money, or effort, in the South; for they 
realized that the future outcome of this section— 
her real construction—must come through its native 
leaders only. Thus, some of the best and most 
progressive citizens of the South today—whether 
they be democrats or republicans—are men who 
came in the wake of the carpet-bag invasion. 


101 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


When Joseph Wheeler became an Alabamian, that 
state was in fullest squeeze of the scaly constrictor. 
So were his native state, and that of his first adop- 
tion. But he came to one, where the folds perhaps 
were tightest ; and his clear and full knowledge of 
that truth in no sort served to affect his resolve. 

Like the rest of us, this true southerner saw that 
the then condition worked destruction to true nation- 
alism. He saw every office of profit gobbled by 
hungry adventurers, through the votes of their 
negro dupes—driven like hogs to the ballot-pens. 
These were permitted to elect themselves to the 
legislatures, town councils and police courts; to 
any places that carried but nominal salary. But 
the governors, judges, collectors, marshals, mayors 
—all fat and important offices of the South—were 
parcelled out between the carpetbaggers and the 
scalawags. They even forced themselves into the 
highest positions in the Federal government ; filling 
the seats of former clean and brainy congressmen, 
and making the cheeks of senators tingle with their 
vicinage. 

Where there were not men enough to go around, 
the offices were duplicated in the elect; and it is 
a well known fact that, during this worse than 
‘‘Reign of Terror,” one individual frequently held 
two, three, even four salaried positions, state and na- 
tional, at the sametime. But that individual never 


102 


IN RECONSTRUCTION DAYS. 


was woolly-headed. The blackness in him never 
showed outwardly on his skin. 

This was the frst ‘‘ Solid South !” 

In those halcyon days of the game of grab, state 
governments and the national legislature had, of 
necessity, to be of one stripe. It mattered little to 
more radical purposes that the stripes’ worn by some 
of them might previously have been of axother pat- 
tern. So long as election returns came in on the 
desired side, no awkward questions were asked 
about the returning officers. Votes were all that 
were wanted in congress and the electoral college. 
If those votes came, it mattered nothing what mon- 
erel adventurers sat in the former seats of Clay, - 
Calhoun, Tucker, Benjamin and their peers. 

Neither did it matter, then, if the credit of the 
wat-impoverished and product-throttled states was 
recklessly pledged for ruinous sums; if taxes, and 
interest imposts wholly unbearable, were levied 
upon a people barely able to find the means of daily 
life. 

And the sums thus wrung out of them were not 
squandered, but hoarded. No public improvements, 
no schools, no civic protection were set up by these 
germrulers. But the salaries were lavish exceed- 
ing ; for ¢hey went into their own pockets. ‘The 
people were left to hold the bag—when it was emp- 
tied. ‘They are holding it, in some places, today. 


103 ~ 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


There has been some just, and more unjust, talk 
about southern ‘‘repudiation.” ‘There has been 
much fiction written about ‘‘ the unreconciled slave- 
owners of the South.” Few of the talkers either 
know, or care, about the ovigin of a load of debt, 
piled through vicarious statute upon southern shoul- 
ders by alien and dishonest hands, until it became 
crushing—ruinous—insupportable ! 

When the free man of the East, or the West, 
reads of ‘‘ white supremacy” it excites no feeling, 
save perhaps antagonism. It carries with it no 
meaning deeper than a sectional political cry. In 
the light of the literal facts, here barely outlined, 
the term may take for him the new significance of 
resistance to robber oppression ; self-protection and 
self-existerice. 

It cannot seem strange that the South—conscious 
of her great possibilities, harrassed, goaded and 
bound for flaying alive—at last rose solidly to shake 
off alien leeches that were sucking her life blood, 
for enrichment of their own base veins. It cannot 
be wondered that re-enfranchisement made the ballot 
of the Solid South more deadly than her discarded 
rifles; that her people marched to the polls in un- 
broken phalanx—on their banners the refrain of the 
real national hymn: ‘‘God and our Native Land!” 

The legacy left by that ‘‘Reconstruction” was 
ghastly to contemplate. Its heritors were well 


104 


IN RECONSTRUCTION DAYS. 


nigh hopeless. In many states loomed mountain- 
ous debts. In every one was clogged production. 
The richest natural section of the Union was 
scarcely capable of feeding itself. It was utterly 
hopeless of meeting the vicarious obligations that 
had gone to fatten the political vultures, preying 
upon her vitals. 

When the modern Prometheus struck the chains 
from his wrists, and stepped from his rock of tor- 
ment, nominally free, he might well have groaned 
because the beak of the Thing fattening upon him 
had not proved fatal ! 

Verily the South:could only feel the truth of Ten- 
nyson’s lines: 


The children born of thee are sword and fire; 
Red ruin and the breaking up of laws! 


It was amid this chaos of disruption, cruelty and 
doubt of the future, that the political life of Joseph 
Wheeler found birth. 

His new home needed soldiers of another sort 
than his past career had made him. His new com- 
rades—ready of will and steadfast in courage, even 
in face of deadly-seeming odds—needed a leader. 
Then the boy who had drilled his little fellows of 
childhood, from instinct; the youth who had later 
given up his life’s pride and hope for duty to his 
native soil; the grand leader of men in the red 


105 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


front of battle—all heard ‘‘assembly” blow once 
more. 

The young lawyer fell into ranks; his clear voice 
rang out into prompt answer: ‘‘//eve/” In every 
skirmish of this new and savage warfare of 
‘‘Peace”; in its councils and its weary watches, 
Wheeler was on duty; quiet, sleepless, untiring as 
he had been in the saddle of the active cavalry 
general. No weak spot in the line of his predatory 
enemy missed his keen eye; no vantage for his own 
side was lost to his quick intuition. 

Rapidly he rose to be a man of mark; was pro- 
moted to leadership—as he had been otherwheres— 
without its seeking; his one idea, duty, and his one 
ambition—country! ‘Then, when the fight was 
won in the field, and the routed Goths and Vandals 
of thievery were sent howling back over those bor- 
ders they had crossed for spoliation only, Wheeler’s 
people turned to the modest and faithfnl soldier of 
peace and offered him reward. 

But the office sought the man. How well he has 
filled it his countrymen of all shades of opinion— 
and of skin—know today. ‘Those nearest to him, 
and thus knowing best, prove their faith by the 
long and continuous service they have claimed from 
him. 

They believe—as does the writer—that their con- 
gressman would never have accepted his seat had 


106 





“ WHEELER’S LEAP.” 





‘““WHEELER’S LEAP”? AT DUCK RIVER. 


he not believed that he could there best serve his 
own people, and a// the people; that he would not 
have left it—dearly as he loved the soldier’s life— 
from impulse, or for honors, had he not felt that by 
going he could best serve his country. 

That is Joe Wheeler’s way! 


*V III.—‘‘ WHEELER’s LEAP” at Duck RIVER. 


So far there has been due reticence from the over- 
told tale of battle, siege and charge. With much 
of glamor about them, these pages have not recorded 
their subject’s many brilliant charges, strategic 
coups and 


Hair breath ’scapes, in th’ imminent deadly breach. 


But this good rule must be proved by exception, 
where temptation is so strong, and incident so ex- 
ceptional. 


* Most of the facts and incidents of this chapter and the two 
succeeding it are from a ‘‘Sketch of General Wheeler,’’ pub- 
lished in Armstrong’s Magazine. Its author withheld his name, 
though he is an old friend of the general. I have endeavored, 
as far as possible, to follow his style of narrative, in spite of 
knowing how hard it is to desiccate and can another’s pro- 
duction. —T. C. DE L. 


109 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


‘‘ Wheeler’s Leap” will go down in history beside 
the famous plunge of Israel Putnam, down ‘‘the 
stairs” at Horseneck. 

A private trooper, who plunged his horse, by the 
side of General Wheeler, over the banks of Duck 
river, furnishes some of the data for this descrip- 
tion : 

Rosecrans’ army was at Murfreesboro; Bragg’s 
at Tullahoma. A forward movement was begun 
by the Federals on June 22d, 1863. Bragg decided 
—in view of the danger of giving battle, with the 
Tennessee river in his rear—to fall back on Chat- 
tanooga. Immense quantities of commissary and 
quartermaster supplies had been collected and 
stored at Shelbyville, on the northern bank of 
Duck river. It was a matter of the last importance 
to Bragg’s army that these supplies should be moved 
to some point safe from capture. Wheeler, at that 
time, was in command of all Bragg’s cavalry. 
Forrest, then subordinate to him, had his command 
near Franklin and Spring Hill. Bragg had or- 
dered the cavalry to withdraw to the south bank 
of Duck river; Forrest to form a junction with 
Wheeler at Shelbyville, on the afternoon of June 
SEO 

Wheeler had left a force at Guy’s Gap to hold the 
enemy in check until Forrest could unite with him. 
The Federal cavalry, commanded by Major-General 
D. S. Stanley, and supported by a corps of infantry 
under command of General Gordon Granger, ad- 
vanced upon Guy’s Gap. General Wheeler had 
stationed a force of 1,200, under his own personal 


110 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


command, about two miles in front of Shelbyville, 
on the Murfreesboro pike. His orders were to hold 
the enemy in check at all hazards. With this little 
band, opposed by overwhelming numbers, he kept 
the Federal columns back for three full hours. 


Dr. John A. Wyeth—son of Hon. Louis Wyeth, 
so long beloved and honored as one of Alabama’s 
best judges-—was at that time a private in Wheeler’s 
cavalry. Inan article in Harper’s Weekly of June 
18th, 1898, he gives so graphic a description of 
that battle that one can almost hear the rattle of 
the carbines and see the rush and impact of oppos- 
ing forces. An extract from his pen—as bright 
and incisive as the surgeon’s knife he wields with 
so much skill—will not be out of place here: 


‘*Of about a score of such ‘scraps,’ some of which 
of larger growth have passed to a place on the 
bloodiest pages of history, the writer does not re- 
call a contest which, for downright pluck in giving 
and taking heavy knocks through several hours, 
surpasses this Shelbyville ‘affair.’ The carbines 
and rifles were flashing and banging away at times; 
and scattering shots, when the game was at long 
range, and then, when a charge came on and the 
work grew hot, the spiteful, sharp explosions 
swelled into a crackling roar like that of a cane- 
brake on fire, when, in a single minute, hundreds 
of the boiler-like joints have burst asunder. Add 
to all the whizzing, angry whirr of countless leaden 
missiles which split the air about you; the hoarse, 


111 


‘“WHEELER’S LEAP’? AT DUCK RIVER. 


unnatural shouts of command—for in battle all 
sounds of the human voice seem out of pitch and 
tone; the wild, defiant yells and the answering 
huzzas of the opposing lines; the plunging and 
rearing of frightened horses; the charges here and 
there of companies or squadrons, which seem to be 
shot out from the main body as flames shoot out of 
a house on fire; here and there the sharp, quick cry 
from some unfortunate trooper who did not hear 
one leaden messenger—for only those are heard 
which have passed by; the heavy, soggy striking 
of the helpless body against the ground ; the scur- 
rying runaway of the frightened horse, as often 
into danger as out of it, whose empty saddle tells 
the foe that there is one rifle less tofear! All these 
sights and sounds go to make up the confusing 
medley of a battle-field. So, for nearly three hours, 
passed this little fight. 


(In the dialect of the southern darkey, the writer 
of the above ‘‘Sho wur thar.’’) 


‘The enemy were repulsed in the attack on the 
center of the Confederate line. Time and again 
they assaulted the plucky little band, each time to 
be driven back in confusion. General Wheeler was 
everywhere, encouraging and animating the men 
to stand firm. His reputation for ubiquity, for 
dash, for ‘bull-dog obstinacy,’ and for ‘nerves of 
steel’ was never so well earned as on that day, when 
he saved the wagon trains of Bragg’s army and 
rescued Forrest from disaster. About 5 o’clock in 
the afternoon, when there was a comparative lull 
in the attack, General Wheeler—leaving where 


112 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


they were, Colonel A. A. Russell’s Fourth Alabama 
cavalry, consisting of about 200 men, with orders 
to ‘stand until they were ridden down, and then - 
for every man to take care of himself ’—withdrew 
the rest of his command to the south bank of the 
river. 

‘““’The last wagon had crossed the bridge; the 
cavalry and artillery were all safely over the river, 
and the bridge was about to be fired, when Major 
Rambeau, of General Forrest’s staff, rode up and 
informed General Wheeler that General Forrest 
with two brigades, was within two miles of Shel- 
byville, and coming at a rapid rate to cross the 
river. General Wheeler at once appreciated the 
danger in which General Forrest was placed. AI- 
though the enemy was already in strong force in 
the outskirts of the town, General Wheeler—calling 
for volunteers to follow him, with the gallant Gen- 
eral Martin and 500 men of his division, and with 
two pieces of artillery—re-crossed the river to 
charge the enemy and drive them back and hold the 
bridge until Forrest could cross. 

‘Tt was a generous and a daring deed, and char- 
acteristic of the impetuous and self-sacrificing 
man he has ever been. 

‘“‘Although he and Martin charged the enemy 
with great intrepidity, and for a while drove them 
back, the odds were too great. The Union caval- 
ry rallied and charged them in turn; riding through 
and over them. ‘The two pieces of artillery—hav- 
ing nothing but solid shot—were of little use. The 
enemy sabred the gunners and passing on took 
possession of the bridge. Adopting the narrative 


113 


‘““WHEELER’S LEAP’? AT DUCK RIVER. 


of the old trooper before mentioned: a regiment of 
the enemy came down the river in our rear and 
took possession of a little island in the middle of 
the river above the bridge. ‘They also formed a line 
of battle parallel with the river and seemed satis- 
fied that they had Wheeler hemmed in with no pos- 
sibility of escape. 

‘“‘When the general saw this he gave the word: 
‘Every man take care of himself the best he can.’ 
With sabre drawn, myself by his side, cutting his 
way through the enemy, he made for the bank of 
the river. Fortunately the stream was swollen. 
Shot at with carbines and pistols and cut at with 
sabres, he put spurs to his horse and plunged down 
the steep bank into the river, I following him the 
best I could, the enemy shooting at us from flank 
and rear, from island and from river bank. Un- 
daunted, the general swam right on to the oppo- 
site bank and rallied his men on the other side. I 
was less fortunate, getting no further than the 
island, where I was captured. 

‘General Wheeler, dressed in a blouse shirt, 
sword in hand, hat off, charging through the 
enemy’s line and leaping down the precipitous river 
bank, presented a picturesque sight rarely witness- 
ed in battle. It is estimated that about fifty men 
were lost in this daring attempt to escape. This 
movement of General Wheeler, in re-crossing the 
river, was not necessary to save General Bragg’s 
wagon train. That had already been accomplished; 
but it was done on a grand impulse to save from 
disaster General Forrest, an officer who, with all 
his magnificent genius and brilliant success when 


114 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


commanding alone, was a little restive under the 
orders of his superiors. There is in all history no 
nobler, or more chivalrous, act than was performed 
by this young cavalry leader on that eventful 
day.” 


IX—THE RIDE RouUND ROSECRANS. 


No reference to the great Confederate’s career 
should omit his raid into Kast and Middle Tennessee 
—his ‘‘Ride Around Rosecrans’ Army.” General 
Wheeler, with the divisions of Generals Wharton 
and Martin and a part of Forrest’s command, 
forded the Tennessee river at Cotton Port, about 
fifty miles above Chattanooga, on September 
30, 1863. He carried with him in all about 3,700 
men. No description of this great and resultfu- 
feat—heretofore discussed as typical—could have 
the interest of General Wheeler’s own words. In 
his report he says: 

‘’lhe enemy had occupied the opposite bank, and 
immediately concentrated a force nearly, if not 
quite, equal to our own, to resist the crossing. 
General Crook, with a large force of Federal cav- 
alry, confronted me and disputed the passage. The 
three brigades of General Forrest, which had been 
ordered to accompany me in the raid, were mere 


115 


THE RIDE ROUND ROSECRANS. 


skeletons, scarcely averaging 500 effective men each. 
They were badly armed, had but a small supply of 
ammunition, and their horses were in a horrible 
condition, having been marched continuously for 
three days and nights without removing saddles. 
The men were worn out, and without rations. The 
brigade commanders made most earnest protests 
against their commands being called upon to move 
in this condition. With this state of things, the 
worst horses were allowed to be returned to the rear. 
‘‘On crossing, we assailed and drove the enemy 
about three miles. On the morning of October 2nd 
I reached Sequatchie Valley, and at 3 o’clock on 
the following morning proceeded down towards 
Jasper with about 1,500 men. After traveling 
about ten miles we overtook and captured thirty- 
two six-mule wagons, which were destroyed. /‘T‘he 
mules were carried along with the command. On 
approaching Anderson’s Cross Roads we were met 
by aconsiderable force of cavalry, which we charged 
and drove before us. We here found a large train 
of wagons, which proved to extend from the top of 
Walden’s Ridge for a distance of ten miles towards 
Jasper. ‘This train was heavily loaded with ord- 
nance, quartermaster and commissary stores. ‘The 
number of wagons was variously estimated at from 
800 to 1,500. No one saw, perhaps, more than half 
the train. The quatermaster in charge stated that 
there were 800 six-mule wagons besides a great 
number of sutler wagons. ‘The train was guarded 
by a brigade of cavalry in front and a brigade of 
cavalry in the rear; and on the flank, where we aie 
tacked, were stationed two regiments of infantry. 


116 





THE WHEELER HOMESTEAD, AT WHEELER, ALA. 





JOSEPH WHEELER. 


‘‘After a warm fight, the guards were defeated 
and driven off, leaving the entire train in our pos- 
session. Selecting such mules and wagons as we 
needed, we destroyed the train by burning the wag- 
ons and sabering or shooting the mules, During 
this work my pickets were driven in on both flanks 
and on the rear. Fortunately, the enemy was re- 
pulsed and we remained undisturbed for eight 
hours and until our work was thoroughly accom- 
plished. Just before dark, as we were retiring, a 
large force of cavalry and infantry moved upon us 
from Stevenson, skirmishing with our rear until 
dark. During this, General Martin, Colonel Avery 
and Lieutenant-Colonel Griffith, were distinguished 
for gallantry. During the night I moved over 
Cumberland mountains and early next morning 
joined General Wharton near the foot of the moun- 
tains and went forward to attack McMinville. The 
enemy was pressing close behind us, but we suc- 
ceeded in capturing the place with an enormous 
supply of quartermaster and commissary stores, 
with the fortifications and garrison, which number- 
ed 537 men with arms, accoutrements, etc.; 200 
horses were also captured. The day and night 
were occupied in destroying the stores, a locomot- 
ive and train of cars, and a bridge over Hickory 
creek, such of the stores as could be transported 
having been distributed to the command. On the 
following day we marched to Murfreesboro. After 
making a demonstration upon the place, we moved 
over and, after a short fight, captured a strong 
stockade guarding the railroad bridge over Stone’s 
river, with its garrison of fifty-two men. The day 


119 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


was occupied in cutting down the bridge and thor- 
oughly burning the timberse We also burned the 
railroad ties and track for three miles below the 
bridge. 

‘“The following day we destroyed a train anda 
quantity of stores at Christiana and Fosterville, 
and destroyed all the railroad bridges and trestles 
between Murfreesboro and Wartrace, including all 
the large bridges at and near the latter place and 
capturing the guards. We also captured and de- 
stroyed a large amount of stores of all kinds at 
Shelbyville, the enemy running from his strong 
fortifications at our approach.” 


There is nothing studied, or ornate, in this direct 
story of the busy and hard-worked cavalry chief, 
written from ‘‘Headquarters in the Saddle,” so 
accustomed as to bring no vaunt. But it shows 
the working-man he ever is when he puts on his 
working-clothes; and it is given as a unique and 
little-known chapter of the history of those stir- 
ring days. 

Wheeler devotes less than ten lines to the de- 
struction of more than fen mzles of wagon-trains; 
a blow of which the disastrous result is easily cal- 
culable by any reader. To the capture of McMin- 
ville—with 537 prisoners, 200 horses and ‘‘an enor- 
mous amount of quartermaster and commissary 
stores ’’—he devotes equally brief space. 

This balance-sheet of a business-man of war 
was made while the items were fresh. It is taken 


120 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


from his report to General Bragg, October 30, 1863. 
Nine days were spent in making this circuit from 
the point of crossing in Kast Tennessee, to Muscle 
Shoals, where Wheeler re-crossed the river. Inall 
that time not a day passed—scarcely an hour—in 
which he was not engaged in fighting the enemy: 

‘‘A reconnoissatice was made towards Columbia, 
which caused the enemy to evacuate that place and 
destroy all their stores, including 30 days’ rations 
for the garrison.” 

The fording of the river at Muscle Shoals was 
accomplished without difficulty, the enemy reaching 
the river just after the Confederates had crossed. 

During the raid 1,000 prisoners were captured, 
and General Wheeler’s estimate of the number of 
killed and wounded of the enemy was that it would 
cover his entire loss. Apropos of this raid, it is 
rather amusing at this late day, when all the pain- 
ful memories of the civil war are being wiped out 
by a later one, to read a congratulatory ‘‘special 
field order” of General Rosecrans, telling of: 

“The brilliant pursuit of the enemy’s cavalry 
under Wheeler by the cavalry command of this 
army, especially Crook’s division and Stokes’ Chi- 
cago Board of Trade battery, which were foremost 
in the fight.” *** ‘*The general commanding 
thanks the cavalry for their valuable services in 
pursuit of the enemy, which resulted in driving him 
in confusion across the Tennessee river. He 


121 


THE RIDE ROUND ROSECRANS. 


compliments them for inaugurating the new prac- 
tice of coming to close quarters without delay.” 


The reader sees here the two pictures. Nor is it 
less amusing that Wheeler’s report mentions the 
loss of some of his artillery, stating: 


‘*While crossing the mountains our artillery car- 
riages became much shattered, and finally two of 
them broke down; we repaired them several times, 
but finally the harness became broken, and finding 
it impossible to drag them on, these two pieces 
were abandoned. One was an old iron gun which 
had been condemned as useless at every inspection 
during the last year; the other was a brass howitzer. 
On the evening of the 7th, while traveling slowly 
over a good road, one of the limbers of General 
Wharton blew up, tearing up everything in the 
vicinity; this piece was also left. If the enemy 
found these pieces they will probably claim to have 
captured them, which claim will be false.” 


Answering this is the claim from that grave and 
able general, George H. Thomas, ‘‘Old Pap,” in 
which he says: 

‘*Hinclosed I also send some papers captured from 
the rebels near Trenton by a scouting party from 
General Hooker’s command, among which is an 
official report of his raid by the Rebel Wheeler, 
himself, in which he forgets to mention the loss of 
four of his guns at Farmington.” 


If ‘‘Old Pap” were living to-day, how he would 
laugh with ‘‘Little Joe” over the parallelism of 
these two accounts. 


122 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


In those bitter and busy days, Mars demanded 
all sacrifice of self from his votaries. The young 
general left tenderer and more inviting scenes, 
elsewhere detailed, and was soon off on another 
raid. ‘This time it was through East and Middle 
Tennessee; but its details would be too lengthy for 
this limited article. It was in the rear of Sherman’s 
army, during the Atlanta campaign. Having de- 
feated Stoneman, McCook and Girard, Wheeler 
forded the Tennessee near Knoxville, in August, 
1864, taking with him about 3,500 men. He captured 
a number of towns, destroyed railroads, and brought 
into their lines hundreds of cattle, which were joy- 
fully received by the starving Confederates. 

* At Franklin he had a hot fight with the enemy, 
in which was killed Major-General John H. Kelly, 
one of the noblest and most dashing officers of 
either army. The writer must pause to mention, 
with affection, this splendid type of southern man- 
hood. He was an orphan boy from Wilcox County, 
Alabama. In some way he received his appoint- 
ment to West Point through a friend in California, 
and was credited to that state. Brave Kelly! In 
his death expired the last of his race; but Ameri- 
can manhood received a new lustre in the heroism 
of this splendid young officer. 


* Verbatim from the Magazine ‘Sketch.”’ A just tribute of 
a comrade. 


123 


X.—His REcorRD IN CONGRESS. 


The reader has seen that Joseph Wheeler is the 
same indefatigable man in legislation that he is in 
war. On national issues he is always a democrat 
true and tried. His speeches on the tariff and on 
finance are considered as among the abiest. 

It is impracticable here to give any full descrip- 
tion of so active, useful and brilliant a record as 
his ; covering nearly twenty years in Congress. A 
few of the most important measures he presented 
and advocated must suffice. 

He was the first man to introduce a bill for the 
pensioning of the survivors of the Mexican war. 
At first objection was made to this measure, be- 
cause many ex-Confederates had served in both 
wars. Under the untiring assaults of the little 
congressman, however, this opposition soon gave 
way and a subsequent congress took the broad and 
philanthropic view of its originator, and passed it. 
Thus, ex-Confederates, as well as ex-Federals, who 
had assisted in raising Old Glory on the ‘‘halls of 
the Montezumas,” shared in the pensions. 

As a member of the committee on ways and 
means, General Wheeler has taken a leading part 
in all the great debates on the tariff in recent 


124 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


years. With his great statistical knowledge, 
analytical mind and deep research, he has been of 
incalculable assistance to his party. He is essen- 
tially a low tariff man—taking always the position 
that a tariff should be imposed on the labor and in- 
dustry of the country for revenue only, and only 
to meet the needs of a government economically 
administered. He has defended this cardinal prin- 
ciple of democracy ‘‘in season and out of season.” 

For clear logic, forcible expression and invinci- 
ble argument, his speeches on the tariff will com- 
pare favorably with those of the ablest statesmen 
and debaters of either party. 

The great questions of finance have also received 
his most earnest attention. He has never wearied 
of effort to bring about financial reform. Heisa 
strong silver man, and his speeches on that phase 
of finance are the most lucid of any of its advocates. 

He is regarded by his fellow-members as a per- 
fect walking encyclopedia of information on all 
questions of tariff and finance. As has been well 
said by a leading journalist: ‘*His tariff speech in 
opening the discussion on the Dingley bill, reply- 
ing as he did to Chairman Dingley’s defense of his 
measure, is regarded as one of the ablest presenta- 
tions of the democratic position of a tariff for rev- 
enue, as contradistinctive to the republican tariff 
for protection, ever been made in congress.” 


125 


HIS RECORD IN CONGRESS. 


There is one great measure that has come before 
congress for years—a question equally local and 
national—which has always received General 
Wheeler’s most earnest and untiring aid. ‘This is 
the improvement of the navigation of the ‘Tennes- 
see river from Chattanooga to its mouth. He 
never relaxes his efforts in getting appropriations 
for this measure, so vital to the interest of the peo- 
ple of the Tennessee Valley, as well as to those of 
the whole country. 

When General Wheeler champions a local or spe- 
cial measure in congress, he is almostirresistible. As 
an illustration: the bill for a Federal court-house, 
post-office and land office at Huntsville, Ala., had 
long been advocated by his predecessors in the house. 
This indefatigable worker was entrusted with this 
bill and, in a short while, his energy and personal 
influence with republicans as well as democrats, 
won, and to-day one of the prettiest Federal 
court-houses on this continent ornaments Hunts- 
ville. 

His speech in favor of pensioning the heroes of the 
Mexican war was the strongest made on that sub- 
ject, and the bill he introduced became the law | 
almost in the exact words in which he prepared it. 
In the next Congress he introduced the Indian war 
pension bill, and that was finally reported and 
passed as he introduced it. 


126 








GENERAL WHEELER AND STAFF—TamMpPaA, FLA., JUNE 14, 1808. 


Lieut. Joseph Wheeler, Jr. Ticuts jie. Reeves: 
Capt. Wm. Astor Chanler. Capt.P. Ws West, Lieut. M. S. Steele. Maj. W. B. Beach. 
Capt. Jos. L. Dickman. Gen’1 Wheeler. Gen’l Guy V. Henry. 





HIS RECORD IN CONGRESS. 


His most remarkable success was in passing the 
bill for the relief of General Fitz John Porter. For 
fifteen years, unsuccessful efforts had been made to 
repair, by legislation, the gross injustice done to 
this gallant Federal. What a picture was here 
presented! ‘The ex-Confederate, from convictions 
of right and justice, defending the Federal whom 
he had opposed in battle. The bill pending so 
long was finally placed in General Wheeler’s 
hands. With military precision, with maps and 
drawings and a grouping of facts unanswerable, 
he worked out the problem and demonstrated that 
Porter, instead of having committed treason, had 


but done his duty. The bill became a law in the 
exact language in which he introduced it. It had 


been bitterly opposed by the most prominent men 
of the nation, both in and out of Congress, includng 
General Logan, yet General Wheeler was support- 
ed by Republicans as well as Democrats, and car- 
ried it through triumphantly. 

All of his speeches are prepared with infinite 
care. ‘They are, as one writer says, ‘‘like proposi- 
tions in mathematics, unanswerable.” Weighed 
in the scales of the rhetorician, he could not be 
called an orator,—and yet he produces the effects 
of the orator; moves, persuades, and convinces men. 


**His speech on the Force bill attracted great at- 
tention, and was commended by the democratic 


129 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


press throughout the United States, as well as by 
the greatest constitutional lawyers of the country, 
as the strongest and most profound argument ever 
made on the question of expediency, as well as on 
the constitutional right of congress to enact a bill 
similar to that.” 

The Force bill passed the lower house of con- 
gress, but the patient soldier and statesman, loving 
his whole country and ready to lay his life down for 
her, had the satisfaction of seeing it killed in the 
senate; and it is to be prayerfully hoped that it will 
never come before the national legislature again. 


XI.—LATER DaAvys. 


The closer one looks at Joseph Wheeler, the 
more he wishes to see of him. His is one of those 
rare ensembles that improve under the microscope: 
its fineness of texture and closeness of grain show- 
ing no openings—ever under erpanston. 

So, coming to the predestined limits of this 
sketchy consideration, the reader may exclaim with 
her of Sheba: ‘‘And behold! the half was not told 
me!” Still, if some things have been told in it which 
are not familiar; if it looks at the character of the 
man of the hour at different angles, and under 
other lights from those heretofore held up, then 


130 


LATER DAYS. 


the missing links may.easily be supplied from con- 
temporaneous history—notably in that of General 
Wheeler’s own narrative. ‘The aim has been not so 
much to give /facts—familiar, or unknown—as to 
suggest the evolution of these out of the man. 

The essay has been to show that truth, justice 
and charity are ‘‘the blessed three” that have guid- 
ed this exceptional publicist in every action of his 
life. These salient characteristics seem to mellow 
and permeate his whole texture under Time’s touch. 
His is the ingrain loyalty that begets loyalty. 

Once during a hot congressional turn in Alabama, 
the writer was traveling in an almost empty day 
coach. A friend was discussing the chances of 
the several districts and asked: | 

‘Do you think Wheeler’s doubtful?” 

Ere reply could be made, a voice from the rear 
roared out: 

“Divvil th’ doubt! Th’ jinrul’s not th’ sort ez 
doubts grow ’roun’.” The brawny, coatless, 
speaker moved towards the disputants, adding: 
‘‘Oi’m a stranger ter yez, byes, but Oi wor wid th’ 
jinrwl in ’62! An’ more by token, Oi’ve laid no oi 
on ’im since. But Oi till yez it’s th’ vote Oi’d 
loike ter gie ’im, ef they’d lit me inter his deestrict! 
Oi till yez both there’s no doubt in it wid th’ jinrul. 
Doubts shlips aff Joe Weeler’s charaktar, loike 
wather aff the fithers on a pig’s back!” 


131 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


There was no laughing at this Celtic partisan’s 
bull. His loyalty and truth were too apparent. 

The author notes: It was during the famous 
‘‘National Drill Encampment,” which he had been 
called to manage, and in which the general took 
the same keen interest he shows in all that con- 
cerns his state, or his friends. His action there is 
too characteristic to be left untold. 

The canvass city around the Washington monu- 
ment was one the National Guards will long recall. 
Under its tents collected over twelve thousand of 
the ‘‘crack” drill experts of the Union; the very 
flower and pride of her volunteer ambition. ‘The 
solitary ‘‘Lomax Rifles,” of Mobile, were practi- 
cally unknown at the North; but Congressman 
Wheeler knew every detail about his state, and he 
builded great hopes upon the metal of ‘‘his boys.” 

The drill tests—for which awards were to be 
announced only on the last day—were many and 
close; covering an entire week. Results were kept 
absolutely secret; and even the keen eyes of the 
general could not ‘‘pick the winner,” ‘The last day 
came; and over fifty thousand people packed the 
stands and grounds behind the White House. Gen- 
eral Phil Sheridan, commanding the U. S. army, 
sat on the judges’ stand, to present the prizes— 
many and rich—when their still unknown winners 
were made known to him. With him sat senators, 


132 


LATER DAYS 


foreign ministers, judges of high courts and noted 
soldiers ; and there too sat ‘‘Joe Wheeler,” his eyes 
g@linting and his face set and flushed, as if he were 
leading some deadly charge. 

A great hush fell over the vast, palpitant throng, 
as Col. Black, 24th U. S. Infantry, chief of the 
board of judges, advanced and handed General 
Sheridan their list of awards. First, and to be 
champions of the Union, came the Lomax Rifles. 

Off went General Wheeler’s new silk hat! Up 
into the air it flew! ‘The set features and gleam- 
ing eyes, unchained from suspense, grew merry 
and boyish in a flash; and I am morally certain 
that the Alabamian never even heard, then and 
there, who had won second, or any place down the 
long list. It was everything for him that ‘‘his 
boys” were first—A/abama victrix! 

General Sheridan had scarce spoken the last 
word of his very evident boredom of award, when 
‘*Little Joe” captured him, and insisted that he 
should go and speak a word of congratulation to 
the boys. Naturally enough, the other cavalry 
chief—who had scant sympathy for what he called 
‘mustang soldiers”—declined the suggestion ; but 
it is not recalled that the Alabama victors missed 
him, and it is known that they prized General 
Wheeler’s hearty and genuine commendation almost 
as much as their flag, medals, and $5,000 prize. 


133 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


And speaking of the little hero’s few inches re- 
calls another story, of very recent days. Cramer, 
in his ‘‘Little Stories of the War” relates that the 
ever alert and restless cavalry chief popped into 
General Wade’s tent, before Santiago; made some 
quick query, and disappeared. Shortly, a panting 
aide, searching for the ubiquitous chief, asked: 

‘General, is General Wheeler here?” 

The leonine owner of the tent blew a cloud of 
smoke, as he answered doubtfully: 

“T really can’t tell you. He was here, and I did 
not see him go, Look behind that cracker box!” 

SZ non e vero é ben trovato. But Mr. Don did not 
have to look behind anything to find Joe Wheeler. 

If the preceding pages have accomplished half of 
their intent they have shown Joseph Wheeler—as 
citizen, soldier, statesman, husband and father—a 
model for the youth of to-day to hold inview. Long 
as he has been in public life, no instance can be 
shown where he has used common trickery, made 
one single statement that was not true; or one 
“smutty” speech or allusion to win cheap laughter! 

It has been shown that he is achurchman and a 
man of prayer, as was Stonewall Jackson. He did 
not line up his men andorder: ‘‘Fire low, boys; 
and may the Lord have mercy on their souls!” but 
he did lay his patriot hopes and fears—for aught 
we know his very plans of battle—at the foot of the 


134 


LATER DAYS. 


Throne nightly, and ask the one availing blessing 
upon them. Religion of the practical kind, that 
permeates the whole fiber and guides directly each 
action of life, however seemingly trivial, is his. 

On one of his stumping tours, the congressman 
stopped with a constituent, proud to have him asa 
guest. When he had retired the host was chided 
by his wife for not leaving cool drinking water; 
and he tapped at the general’s door with a fresh 
supply. He found his guest disrobed and on his 
knees, and was about to withdraw. The general 
rose at the moment, and the other began apology 
for his intrusion. ‘The calm answer was: 

“No intrusion, my good friend; none in the 
world. I always kneel and say my prayers to the 
good God, beforeI retire; and I am not ashamed to 
be seen upon my knees.” 

His Academy chum, General John M. Wilson, 
chief of the U. S. Engineer Corps, once said that, 
for many long years, he had never heard the hymn, 
‘Onward, Christian Soldiers,” without thinking of 
“Point” Wheeler. 

The writer of the sketch recalls in it that 
Wheeler’s exceptional retention as commander of 
cavalry; his reports, now a part of history, and 
President Davis’ quoted condensation of them in 
his book, are not the sole records of his usefulness 
and of its recognition. He was thanked by joint 


135 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


resolution of the Confederate Congress; and the 
South Carolina legislature tendered thanks for his 
gallant defense of Aiken, in that state. 

On May 11, 1864, Wheeler became the senior 
cavalry general of the armies of the Confederacy ; 
being then only twenty-eight years old! But he 
had experienced previous annoyance in the service 
from his boyish appearance. Pompous and self- 
appreciating commanders, his seniors in years, were 
at first restive of control by a youth. One high- 
headed colonel actually resigned, saying: 

‘‘T will not serve under that boy!” His name is 
lost, at this moment; the ‘‘boy’s” is carved on 
Fame’s most enduring tablet. 

The same writer recalls a familiar example of the 
general’s delicacy and generosity, told by a private 
at one of the reunions. At an inspection of his 
command he accompanied the inspector on his 
rounds. One trooper did not unbutton his coat; 
the inspector reproved and the soldier blushed in 
embarrassment. Wheeler at once divined its cause, 
whispered a word to the inspector, and he passed 
on. The poor fellow had on no shirt; and imme- 
diately on return to his quarters, his general sent 
him the last one he had in his kit ! 

When armies give nicknames to their leaders, 
their style shows the love, or dislike, out of which 
theyvare born, ~**\ Little Phil”, and ~** Dittiesice= 


136 





From a special wash drawing made by H. P. Ijams. 


MRS. GHNERAI, GRANT GREETING GENERAL WHEELER ON 
RETURN FROM CUBA. 


_ 


~~ 





SANTIAGO TO MONTAUK. 


are equally terms of endearment; both derived from 
physical causes. So was the ever-remembered 
‘*Point”; but Wheeler’s boys had other names for 
him. The ‘‘Bee Hunter” came from his habit of 
looking up into the trees as he rode along, as 
though watching for ‘‘gums.” Their favorite 
soubriquet was the ‘‘War Child”; and when he would 
sally forth for a nocturnal dash, the whisper ran 
down the line: ‘“The War Child rides to-night!” 


XII.—SANTIAGO TO MONTAUK. 


It is not yet quite assured that it will not puzzle 
the pundit of the future, taking pen for the history 
of the war with Spain, to write his preface. The 
deeper he gets into his process of sifting ante-bel- 
lum facts, the less will he be able to explain defi- 
nitely what the war was about. But this is not 
the place—nor is the writer a competent one—to 
volunteer for fumbling at the Gordian knot of 
cause, in behalf of the far-futured Macaulay. 

With no desire to anticipate history, a glance must 
be taken of the Santiago campaign; and any view 
of it must be largely filled with the big little man. 
All that was the legitimate child of fitness and 
circumstance; and precedent pages have been writ- 


189 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


ten wholly in vain if their reader is not prepared to 
understand—from the bare /facts—why the once- 
noted Confederate pressed to the forefront now. 

It were needless to restate how he was the first to 
offer that long-sheathed, but unrusted, sword to 
the president; how he went to the front with a 
youthful promptitude surprising in any man, but 
wonderful in one of his years and later routine; or 
how—once more in harness—the soldier-fire within 
glowed and blazed into undimmed flame. 

It will be remembered that President McKinley 
appointed Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee major-gen- 
erals on the evening of May 2d, 1898. ‘There was 
no session of the senate next day; but on the 4th 
the nominations were unanimously confirmed. Five 
days later General Wheeler was ordered by General 
Miles to report for immediate assignment to Gen- 
eral Brooke, at Chickamauga. In ‘‘ Wheeler’s way” 
he lost no time in preparation, but reported at 
Camp Thomas within thirty hours; the very next 
day receiving his order for Tampa. 

This was received at 2. p.m. On the 2:07 Pp. M. 
train was the new commander of the cavalry, ex- 
youte for ‘Tampa, where he reported next day. 
His own book quietly says: 

‘When orders from Washington were received 
assigning me to the command of the cavalry divis- 
ion, I immediately pitched my tent with the com- 


140 


SANTIAGO TO MONTAUK. 


mand and directed myself to inspection and other 
means of becoming familiar with the officers and 
men. In less than three days I had looked squarely 
in the face of every man in the command. I at- 
tended the drills and soon saw that the command 
was one of which I could be justly proud.” 

The reader is spared details of the long, repeated 
and sickening delays at Tampa; the orders and 
counter-orders that burthened the wires, ‘‘balled 
up” the transports and demoralized the men. But 
at last only on June 7th—after his hasty rush to 
join ‘‘the expedition now leaving,” on May 12th— 
General Wheeler and his staff, with a part of his 
cavalry division, boarded the transport ‘‘ Alle- 
ghany.” The ‘“‘Flying Dutchman” of Spain had been 
seen, by too sharp eyes, off the Florida coast; and 
it was only on June 14th that the expedition got off, 

The fact of the arrival of the transport fleet and 
of its disembarkation at Balquiri is familiar to the 
public; but there are many points unknown—both 
as to this and the first battle—on which General 
Wheeler’s book throws a searchlight. Most inter- 
esting of these are how the little general got in the 
van at Guasimas, and saved the San Juan fight 

Neither of these was planned by the heads of that 
remarkable, and almost unplanned, campaign; but 
they were not ‘‘accident,” as has been so glibly 
stated—any more than was the Guasimas fight the 
alleged ‘‘ambush.” ‘They grew out of the alertness 


141 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


and military instinct of their hero, and gave him 
the post of honor that Shafter had reserved for Law- 
ton. For the latter’s division was ordered to dis- 
embark first, although Wheeler was second in com- 
mand to Shafter. 

While the boats of the navy were ready to ‘‘ surf” 
the men in, the transports—after the rule of such 
craft—kept too far out for landing. Wheeler chafed 
under the delay; he was crazy to get ashore. 
Suddenly a small fleet of navy boats closed around 
the ‘‘ Alleghany,” their officer asking: 

‘‘Are you the next to disembark ?” 

‘We are all ready!” was Wheeler’s prompt re- 
ply; and its result was that eight hundred of his 
cavalry were on Cuban soil, beforesome of Lawton’s. 
This was June 22d; and the next morning, Wheeler 
was directed by Shafter 'to throw out pickets as 
far as Siboney; and, all of his men being now 
ashore, he pushed on to examine the ground, rid- 
ing far ahead of his column, almost unattended. 

Under his orders, Young left Balquiri at 4:30 
p.m., with the ‘‘Rough Riders” and a squadron of 
10th U. S. cavalry, carrying four Hotchkiss guns. 
He passed through and beyond Lawton’s infantry 
diyision—encamped in the neck of the valley ; thus 
becoming the van of the army of occupation! 

Meantime General Wheeler had promptly rid- 
den out to examine the conditions for himself; and 


142 


SANTIAGO TO MONTAUK. 


now, returning, ordered Young to march out at 
dawn for a reconnoissance in force towards Guasi- 
mas. Under this order Wood’s Rough Riders took 
the trail over the hill at daybreak, June 24th ; Young 
himself leading the regulars up the valley road. 
Both commanders had detailed instructions, in case of 
the probable fight ¢hey expected. 

This much of detail is given in disproof of the 
swift statements at the time, and their repetition 
since, that they marched into ‘‘an ambuscade.” On 
the contrary, Wheeler sent them to meet and dis- 
lodge the advance of the Spanish army, barring 
Shafter’s way toSantiago. Thesplendid valor and 
constancy of those soldiers—fighting an unseen foe 
in a strange field; strung out in disorganizing 
single file, torn with cactus and parched with 
tropic sun—is now a national anthem. But they 
won their great victory, and suffered their heavy 
loss, zot from being ‘‘ambushed,” but carrying out 
the strategic plan of their clear-headed general. 

The crack of Hotchkiss guns, heard in Lawton’s 
tent, was his first intimation that the first battle of 
the war was on, and that Wheeler’s division was 
fighting it. And the movement—with its brilliant, 
if bloody result—was still more surprising news to 
General Shafter far away. It had upset what 
‘‘plan” he may have had for the advance; but it 
had won, for all that, and had put his army in the 


143 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


straight—and unobstructed—road to Santiago! In 
his report to General Corbin, Shafter says: 


‘‘The orders for June 24 contemplated General 
Lawton’s division taking a strong defensive posi- 
tion a short distance from Siboney, on the road to 
Santiago; Kent’s division was to be held near Sib- 
oney, where he disembarked ; Bates’ brigade was to 
take position in support of Lawton, while Wheeler’s 
division was to be somewhat to the rear, on the 
road to Balquiri.” 


This was the ‘‘plan’” Wheeler’s war instinct up- 
set, by winning a victory while his commanding 
general was arranging for one. But Shafter’s 
dispatch, already quoted, endorses him: 


‘‘The engagement had an inspiriting effect upon 
our men, and doubtless correspondingly depressed 
the enemy, as it was now plainly demonstrated to 
them that they had a foe to meet who would ad- 
vatice under a heavy fire from intrenchments.” 


He adds that the victory gave the army a well 
watered country further to the front, ‘‘on which to 
encamp our troops.” Soit comes to this: Young 
followed Wheeler’s instructions ; and Wheeler, who 
had received no specific orders, executed his judg- 
ment as a veteran soldier and engaged the foe. 

There has been no point yet advanced to show 
that Wheeler acted ‘‘in direct violation of orders,” 
as General Miles was led to suspect. On the con- 
trary, all facts prove indisputably this: He was the 
ranking officer ashore; he had been directed to 


144 


SANTIAGO TO MONTAUK. 


make a reconnoissance and feel the enemy. His 
ideas of a reconnoissance were that you must get 
near enough to your enemy to see him; and then 
that you can feel him best by making him feel you. 
General Shafter agreed; for Adjutant-General 
McClernaud wrote from the steamship ‘‘Seguranica,” 
at 1p. M. on the 24th of June: 


‘*The commanding general directs me to say that 
he is glad to hear such good news and that you are 
occupying the enemy’s ground.” 


But, in spite of saccharine words, General Shaf- 
ter does not appear to have been too pleased at the 
audacious dash and far-seeing ‘‘war-childhood”’ 
that took the first glory of the Cuban campaign 
away from him and his. Wheeler was left se- 
verely alone in command of the cavalry; and it is 
not of record that he was consulted, or called into 
council, for the attack on San Juan. It was the 
tramp of troops passing to the attack that gave the 
sick warrior his first intimation of the great battle 
in prospect, He rose from his cot, ordered an am- 
bulance and started for the front. But the fever of 
war was too much for the fever of climate, and he 
soon roared out for his horse and, spite of protesta- 
tions, was assisted to saddle and led his division. 

He was in charge of the left wing of the army at 
San Juan, and led the advance upon the entrenched 
hill-top, carried and held it—and won the fight. 


145 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


Then it was that the ground gained had to be 
held. The line to hold it was so thin—the deci- 
mation of fire, fever and fatigue so great—that 
Shafter urged the necessity of falling back upon 
the coast to await reinforcements. It is said that 
one of his despatches—the most urgent one—was 
never printed. It is only necessary to read the two 
that were; to compare the jubilant echo of ‘‘A 
Hot time in the Old Town” with the indigo hue of 
the other, to be assured of some strong tonic ad- 
ministered to the adipose commander. 

Wheeler promptly protested, both by letter and 
in person, against one inch of retrograde. He 
showed that every backward step meant redoubled 
loss and effort to regain later ; that it would dispirit 
our own tired men; inspire the enemy and give 
him time to refortify his points proved weakest to 
him. Shafter would not listen. He appealed to 
the War department. It sustained Wheeler’s view! 

Santiago was won by Wheeler’s judgment— 
shown from first to last—as much as by fighting. 

Then came the return; those days at Montauk, 
when the President saw with his own eyes that 
‘some one had blundered.” He felt the dire need 
of the clearest head, of the most prompt decision 
and of the ripest experience he could command. 
He found them concentrated in the little general of 
two wars. and into the hands of Joseph Wheeler 


146 





CAPTAIN JOE WHEELER, JR. 


As Cadet at West Point — The “Chip of the Old 
Block,’”’? who was Aide-de-Camp to his 
Father in Cuba. 


ata 





Ava 
sis ee Saas _¥ 
vy ~ 7 it , 4 


SANTIAGO TO MONTAUK. 


he put unreservedly the cleaning of that Augean 
stable, overpiled with noisome incompetence and 
overflowing with evil contagion. ‘The result is too 
close under the public eye to need new comment. 

How Wheeler labored, how his whole family 
labored with him there, and how they felt together 
the awful touch of His hand, that makes that fair 
shore black to their eyes—all know. 

Thence—when there was no longer a Camp 
Wikoff, its commander was sent to Huntsville, to 
take charge of that camp. ‘There he was on his 
own familiar ground. But his restless energy 
found plenty to exercise it, in remodeling the great 
camp and improving its sanitary regulations. 

At Huntsville, Wheeler became the idol of the 
volunteers, who had before only heard of him; and 
the ‘‘cits” could not do enough to express their 
love andrespect. The magnificent black thorough- 
bred, and rich accoutrements, presented him are 
but one ‘‘outward and visible sign” of this. 

Thence he went back to Washington, to take 
that seat in Congress to which he had been sent with 
exceptional unanimity, while fighting a far different 
campaign on a far-away shore. The president made 
mandatory objection: the soldier obeyed. And 
there showed that inexplicable desire to ‘‘down” 
him, which from occult cause exists in some 
breasts covered by the blue, and some by the black. 


149 


XTII.—THE Man, 'To-Day. 


General Wheeler weighs about 118 pounds, and 
stands five feet and five inches in his boots. 

To-day he stands higher, perhaps, than any man 
in this country in the hearts of its people, and in 
the estimate of ‘‘men of wisest censure.” 

If it may not be said strictly ‘‘nothing in the 
life” of the Fifty-Fifth Congress ‘‘became it like the 
leaving it,” indisputably none of its acts has 
given more universal satisfaction than has the 
retention in his seat of the gentleman from Ala- 
bama. ‘That was practical legislation for political 
economy ; it did ‘‘the greatest good to the greatest 
number.” 

It is no part of narrative to discuss motzves of 
men other than its direct subject ; but no statement 
of fact about General Wheeler’s present could be 
complete without reference to the later-existent 
struggle to oust him from his seat. And it is cold 
truth that not alone his own constituents regret 
whatever overstrained construction of ‘‘duty” it 
may have been that made the ‘‘ leader” of his own 
party a new Peter the Hermit—leading a crusade. 

Ah! he was a great diplomatist and statesman 
who declared a mistake to be far worse than—a 
crime! For, whatever may be the strict construc- 


150 


THE MAN, TO-DAY. 


tion of ‘‘laws, rusting in antique sheaths,” their 
upsetting this time has popular approval. 

There is nothing that Joseph Wheeler—or any 
other patriot, dead or living—has ever done, which 
should exempt him from infraction of /ex scripta, or 
of the law of usage. But when constructive viola- 
tion of a desuetudinous act comes from obedience 
to the will of the highest authority in the land ; 
and when that will but voices the will of the people 
that gives it power to speak; when obedience 
springs from pure desire to serve the State, at the 
cost of double labor and double responsibility—then 
the heart of a Nation must beat approval of the 
law-breaking, and in full sympathy with the inno- 
cent law-breaker. 

That popular surprise—not unmixed with popular 
indignation—that has found vent through pen and 
brush, without regard to section or tenet, means: 

When the ‘‘Leader” kicks at the Wheeler, 
it is safer to unhitch ‘‘ the Texas steer!” 

Nothing since the declaration of war has excited 
more widespread interest than this sudden blow 
aimed at the popular idol; the unexpected source 
from which it came, and the inexplicable alliance 
of influences it begot. Nothing since the peace 
has made more friends—for the man struck. 

Yet, in the hour of his triumph, the dignified and 
earnest man whose virtues won it at the hands of 


151 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


friends and old foes, spoke no words of bitterness 
—even of self-gratulation. For Ve victis never 
was written in Joseph Wheeler’s life-creed; and it 
was more in sadness that he told the interviewer: 

‘“No one knows how the effort to unseat me, 
coming from my own side of the house, has hurt. 
It struck me here,” he placed his hand on his heart. 
‘In order to accomplish this end, those who had it 
in charge have tried to reflect upon my integrity 
as a democrat, making it appear by innuendo that I 
had forsaken the principles of my party. That is 
what hurt. I was never a better democrat in my 
life, and never believed more firmly in the princi- 
ples of my party. Had the house acted differently 
from what it did, I would have felt as a knight 
might who had some stain placed on his escutcheon. 
But what pleases me more than aught else is the 
fact that so many of my own party, both young and 
old, voted against considering the question.” 

Small wonder indeed that: ‘“T‘he president was 
highly pleased at the action of the house, and sent 
his congratulations to the littlehero.” That action 
vindicated the president as well; both in his power 
of selection and in his construction of law. He 
will not heed interested army ‘‘kickers” now. 

This persecution has made the man more of a 
hero than ever. Risking tautology, it may be said 
that no name had of late years been more often on 
the popular tongue than Joseph Wheeler. His old 
history has been rewritten and reread; his recent 


152 


THE MAN, TO-DAY. 


history made a twice-told tale. His personality, 
his private life and the simplest stories about him 
have been discussed in every varied form. ‘Those 
nearest and dearest to him—whose gentle lives 
have naught to do with affairs—have been made, if 
lovingly, a sort of public property. 

The recent peace jubilees and the presidential 
visits, West, East and South, showed the deep, 
firm hold the general’s personality has upon the 
people. Retiring as he is, the cheers that greeted 
him everywhere were louder and more enthusiastic 
than those even which met the head of the nation. 

The close relations of confidence and mutual 
esteem between him and the president have grown 
naturally out of mutual understanding by each of 
the better traits of the other. True men show in 
trying moments, as under the X-ray; and these two 
have seen each other. That their knowledge thus 
gained has caused misconstruction is natural. 

‘For there’s little to earn and many to keep,”’ 
and party lines may not be crossed without suspi- 
cionfromsmallsouls. It has’even been hinted that 
he had ambitions for the second place upon the 
McKinley presidential ticket! 

Lately this Jetse was put to this author, and his 
belief of its possibility asked, by a sensible and 
cultured man. Naturally, the reply was: 

‘‘T like the ticket: it is as national, as impossi- 


153 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


ble. But how would this one do: George Dewey, 
of Vermont and Manila, and Joseph Wheeler, of 
Georgia, New York, Alabama and Santiago?” 

Now, too, fly rumors that Wheeler is to be sent 
to Manila; and that his daughter is to go with 
him. ‘To this writing they remain rumors: they 
may be the forerunners of a possibility. Should 
the president see the best use for the general there, 
he will go to Deweyland as he went toCuba. To 
paraphrase the 77zbune’s words, already quoted: 

‘“No place where the flag flies is too hot for ‘Joe 
Wheeler’; and where he goes, the hearts of the 
American people must likewise go!” 

There, too, would go the heart—if cause held 
her active body absent—of his loyal and helpful 
daughter. For the twain are one in sympathy, in 
sentiment and in soul. Heis her idol. When he 
went to new duties and dangers in May last, that 
gentle heart spoke to him those words of Ruth: 

‘‘Hintreat me not to leave thee, nor return from 
following after thee; for whither thou goest I will 
go, where thou lodgest I will lodge. ‘Thy people 
shall be my people and thy God my God. May the 
Lord do so unto me and more also, if aught but 
Death part me and thee.” 


154 


XIV.—WHEELER’S GREATEST VICTORY. 


The greatest victories are ever moral ones; those 
that are won by no single act of any man, but by 
a crystallization of all the acts of his life. Thus 
the moral victory of General Wheeler’s retention in 
congress overshadows even those of his good sword. 

The vote was truly a phenomenal one. ‘The two- 
thirds majority—146 to 77—was in no sense a party, 
or even a political one. It comprised 101 republi- 
cans, 44 democrats and 1 populist, as against 43 
democrats, 21 republicans and 13 populists. 

It was not a vote upon his actual retention ; it 
simply brushed aside the possibility of even consid- 
ering Wheeler’s ejectment; and todo this, democrats 
promptly ignored ‘‘leadership” they could not fol- 
low; republicans released their windpipes from the 
velvet glove over their Czar’s iron hand. 

And Joseph Wheeler’s reception of that ovation 
of the ballot—like his port after it, under gross pro- 
vocation—was simply perfect. 

When the little congressman left his seat on Rus- 
sian leather, to resume his seat on ‘‘pigskin,” on 
May 9th last, his colleagues in congress gathered 
about him in a leave-taking that was warmed by 
genuine feeling, if saddened by some apprehension. 
The first was spoken in frank and touching words; 
the other by the grave faces of his friends. For it 


155 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


was believed by many that this parting was final. 
They thought the wiry sexegenarian an old man- 
and feared he would never return from the hard; 
ships of active campaign in such a climate. 

It is a notable fact that Speaker Reed—with that 
adopted bonhommie he uses when so minded, cheered 
the doubters with the epigrammatic profanity : 

‘Don’t worry about Wheeler: he never stays in 
one place long enough for God Almighty to put 
His finger on him.” 

On the 4th day of the March succeeding, when 
the speaker of the house tried zs finger on the re- 
ordained representative, it were logical deduction 
from his own words to assume that Mr. Reed felt 
himself superior to the Godhead! 

Concensus of opinion seems to be that Mr. Bailey, 
of Texas, made another large mistake, when his 
pettishness caused him to throw up his ‘‘leader- 
ship” of ‘‘followers” who wouldnot beled. Itavers 
that in declaring that they voted ‘‘against their 
own party,” Mr. Bailey somewhat confused the 
party and his own proper person. ‘‘L’etat, cest 
mow” was never democratic doctrine. 

But public opinion has not so far recalled Mr. 
Speaker Reed’s don mot, as to discuss his possible 
differentiation of himself and Deity. 

Yet somehow the little man escaped from the 
crushing finger of the ‘‘ biggest” one; and on the - 


156 








WHEELER ON PEACK PARADE. 


Leading Wheeler’s Old Cavalry at Atlanta Jubilee, Dec. 15, 1898. 


j 
hi 
‘ 
¥ 
r 
. A 
i 
rie 
i ‘ 
(ime Po 
“* 
hie 
. a 
‘ee 
+a. 
ais 
. 
f 





——— 





WHEELER’S GREATEST VICTORY. 


morning succeeding any man who read, in all broad 
Anglo-Saxondom, ‘‘could put his finger” on the 
speaker of the fifty-fifth house. 

Gagged by old parliamentary usage, that ‘‘Reed 
tule’? made as of the Medes and Persians, Joseph 
Wheeler spoke to the world from the forum of 
an ‘‘unparliamentary” press. 

And the world heard this: 


‘‘Seeing there was nothing to be done in the 
house, I asked unanimous consent to speak for five 
minutes. I was not recognized, but Mr. Payne was 
notified to move a recess of five minutes. I then 
asked that before that motion was put that I be per- 
mitted to address the house for three minutes. If 
the speaker had submitted to my request, I am 
confident no member of the house would have ob- 
jected. What I intended to say was as follows: 

‘*No one reveres the constitution more than my- 
self, and I could not be induced to advocate a con- 
struction contrary to the intent of its framers. 

‘‘When I received the appointment as major gen- 
eral of volunteers last May, I was requested by per- 
sons whose desires I could not disregard not to 
resign my seat in congress. I found that during 
‘ae present congress thirty-three of its members 
had been appointed to offices and that none of them 
had resigned their seats in congress. I examined 
the decisions and precedents on the subject and 
found that during the 110 years of the existence of 
our government hundreds, and possibly thousands, 
of the members of congress had accepted offices dur- 
ing their terms; and that none of them, holding 


199 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


temporary offices like mine, had ever been unseated. 
I found that the decisions of the courts—even in- 
cluding four decisions quoted by General Henderson 
in his report—take the ground that the inhibi- 
tions found in the constitution with regard to of- 
ficers referred to offices of a permanent character 
and not of a temporary character. I also found 
that the attorney general of the United States had 
rendered an elaborate opinion on the subject. He 
took precisely the same ground and held that an of- 
fice in the volunteers was not such an office as was 
inhibited by the constitution. I was anxious for 
the matter to be brought up in the house and fully 
discussed, so that the decision would be in harmony 
with the spirit of the constitution. ”’ 

The writer knows that there is no North, no 
South, no Kast, no West—except in the geography: 
this zs the era of ‘‘ peace and good will,” of jubilee, 

and of hip! hip! hurrah! Buthe knows, too, that 
_ there is good, red blood in all American veins ; and 
that it zs ‘‘ thicker than water.”” He knows that when 
a moribund congress sings ‘‘ America,” the hearts 
of the singers feel ‘‘Home, Sweet Home!” 


So, at that late jubilant funeral of sectional ran- 
cor, we of the South have occasion to thank the 
God of battles—the God of the South, as of all the 
land—that its closing moment called forth the 
wildest and most heartfelt cheers for the two most 
worthy, most trusted and most beloved sons of 
America—George Dewey, of Vermont, and Joseph 
Wheeler, of Alabama. 


160 


WHEELER’S GREATEST VICTORY. 


But a moment before, the speaker of the house 
had given the eager and nervous representative of 
the ‘‘old eighth ” Alabama district his most basa- 
liskian stare, in place of ‘‘ recognition.” 

Mr. Reed forgot that the demand was made and 
repeated by his peer—at any time; by one whose 
dignified reticence from every prerogative of mem- 
bership, while it was assailed, had raised him 
higher than the speaker’s chair. Mr. Reed’s ever- 
strong brain was dizzied by sweet strength of the 
verbal mescal, just poured for his quaffing by the 
hand of the Texan ‘‘leader.” He could not hear 
Wheeler’s call for justice through the titillant 
echoés of his own praise. 

But the little general is not of the kind to be 
turned to stone by the eye of mortal, bear he gavel, 
or sword, in hand. He was not permitted the 
scant courtesy of speech for three minutes, after 
voluntary and tasteful silence for more months. 
But he has spoken to the country ; and in toue so 
dignified, so restrained and so true that it will echo 
to Maine—and beyond. 

The Alabamian’s prompt public statement will 
go to the hearts of all Americans—that have red 
blood in them—from Mr. Reed’s northermost boun- 
dary to the. Golden Gate—from Cuba to freezing 
Klondike. For those hearts answered the speaker’s 
stony stare, then and there. | 


161 


JOSEPH WHEELER. 


The overcrowded galleries had just cheered to the 
echo Mr. Reed’s third biennial restatement of his 
own fidelity toduty, absolute impartiality and rigid 
adherence to the proprieties. He had said how 
what heart he has was moved by the noble and 
tender words of the gentleman from 'Texas—upon 
whom he had so frequently felt it his duty to sit 
down with all his pounds. And then—after say- 
ing that he (for he is the office) ‘‘has but one supe- 
rior, and no peer’—he sat himself down, a plump 
male Niobe; but was blind and deaf to the gentle- 
man from Alabama. 

Then the heart of a people—who are one from 
Maine to Texas—spoke; even as it had been voiced 
by their true representatives, on the previous day. 

Then it had told that people’s will; and despite 
rule and clique and party—even while doubtful of 
actual law—had found neither time nor inclination 
to consider the superservicable report that would 
have vacated Congressman Wheeler’s seat. 

Now, in the latest moment of its last hour, the 
mention of Joseph Wheeler’s name shook the solid 
rafters of that house, even as George Dewey’s had 
shaken them the moment before. 

But that is Wheeler’s way! His life has taught 
his peers that, under the uniform, they ever will 
find the Man! 


THE END. 


162 


OTHER BOOKS BY T. C. DeLEON, 


AUTHOR OF ‘‘CREOLE AND PURITAN,’’ ‘‘ JOHN HOLDEN, UNIONIST,”’ 
‘*A FAIR BLOCKADE BREAKER,”’ ‘‘ THE PRIDE OF 
THE MERCERS,”’ ETc., ETC. 





FOUR YEARS IN;JREBEL CAPITALS; Sketch, Anecdote and Humor 
of the War. 386 large pages, Cloth, Gilt................. $1.50 


Rt. Hon Wm. EF Gladstone: ‘I write to thank you for your volume, ‘ Four 
Years in Rebel Capitals,’ which I have read with very lively interest.” 


Gen. Bradley T. Johnson: ‘‘Sucha graphic picture of men and events will 
be invaluable to our future Macaulay.” 


Capt. Chas. King, U.S. A.: ‘It is a book full of truth, of incident, of inside 
history, written without fear or favor.” 


The London (EFng.) Times: ‘Mr. Deleon has written a book which possesses 
a distinctive character: a great deal more than a mere military history” 


CRAG-NEST; THE ROMANCE OF SHERIDAN’S RIDE; ‘‘ Blue 
Snuceeeay edition 3) Cloth. Oilt-es2...<kgbeng cee heen: $1.25 


‘‘Of all your novels, this pleases me best’”—Mrs. Augusta Evans Wilson. 


‘There are brave and knightly cavaliers, wearing blue and gray uniforms 
in this great war romance.’’— Wallace Reed, in Atlanta Journal 


THE PURITAN’S DAUGHTER, (Sequel to ‘‘ Creole and Puritan,’’) 
PORTO POLLEN ES ys LS, ko ge, Maier mitiey Bees Yo Seman toa dee 50c 


‘“ The best novel of Southern Life yet written.”—Daily News. 


OUT OF THE SULPHUR (Prize Novel in ‘‘ Tales from Town Topics), 
MSEC OLO ero oko sae te aiiig ean ec Oa to <a IN ig ae te 25c 


SCHOONERS THAT BUMP ON THE BAR;; Travesty of ‘‘ Ships 
That Pass in the Night ’’—Paper ; 12 full page illustrations. ..25¢e 


Sold by all Bookmen, or mailed (prepaid) on receipt of price, by 
T. C. De LEON, Atlanta, Ga. 


Confederate 
Camp-Fire 
Songs 


These beautiful Songs and Poems, so dear to every 
Southern heart, have been collected and published 
jn attractive book form of 200 pages, in Confederate 
gray cloth binding, with title stamped in gold. 


EVERY SOUTHERN HOME 
SHOULD POSSESS A COPY OF THIS BOOK 


Cloth Binding, eran Taye 75 Cents 
Paper Binding, —————25 Gents 


Order at once, as the supply is limited. 


ADDRESS 


BYRD PRINTING COMPANY 
ATLANTA, GA. 


Confederate 
Memories 


VETERAN’S SOUVENIR 
MAY — 1899 


oo 


Edited by T. G. DeLEON 


Sold Everywhere ________ at 25 Cents 





| ny Ne 
i nee ne eT 





er 


av 














“ 


on pe 





3 0112 04759568 


‘BADGE DEVICE OF WHEELER'S Cavar, 
(By Permission of Camp A, Atlanta, Ga. a 


TT NT 









